[Report 1907] / Medical Officer of Health, Leeds City.

  • Leeds (England). City Council.
Date:
1907
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1907] / Medical Officer of Health, Leeds City. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    22/154 (page 14)
    In connection with South East Leeds under heading {a), an attempt was made to collect and classify the information obtained on visiting the homes of 1,291 children who had died. It was found (p. 35) that of those amongst this number dying before they had lived a month 38 per cent, had been, so we were told, fed entirely at the mother’s breast, 17 per cent, were fed either wholly, or in part, artificially ; while in 42 per cent, the cases were fatal before any feeding was attempted—the death in most of these cases being due to ante-natal causes. There remain 2\ per cent, unaccounted for. Of those, however, who lived long enough to be fed, more than twice as many of these fatal cases were breast fed as compared with the hand fed. Of the children dying in the second month of life, and omitting those of whom the record was incomplete, 64 per cent were entirely, 36 per cent, not, or not entirely, breast fed. In the third month the corresponding figures were just the reverse, 36 entirely breast fed, 64 not so (see also p. 130). Beginning at p. 37, it was attempted to ascertain approx¬ imately from information obtained on visiting infants, whose births were registered during the earlier half of 1905, when they were weaned, and to compare the age of weaning in the children who died before the end of June, 1907, with those who survived their second year. This information, collected in the form of a table (5d) on p. 42 of the report for 1906 indicates that while the former group showed that those entirely breast fed formed 77 cent, in the first week, falling in the second month of life to 58 per cent, the group of those surviving their second year contained 93 per cent, entirely breast fed in the first week, and even in the second month nearly 83 per cent of these sur¬ viving ififants had been wholly mother fed. The number of surviving members of the families where the 1,29.1 children died before the end of their second year was dealt with on p. 45, and a contrast effected between the birth rate.