Excessive infant-mortality : how can it be stayed? : a paper contributed to the National Social Science Association, (London meeting) : to which is added a short paper, reprinted from the Lancet, on infant-alimentation, or artificial feeding, as a substitute for breast-milk, considered in its physical and social aspects / by M.A. Baines.

  • Baines, Mary Anne.
Date:
[1862]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Excessive infant-mortality : how can it be stayed? : a paper contributed to the National Social Science Association, (London meeting) : to which is added a short paper, reprinted from the Lancet, on infant-alimentation, or artificial feeding, as a substitute for breast-milk, considered in its physical and social aspects / by M.A. Baines. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    given to these figures through the medium of the press, if we remain ignorant or inactive concerning the melancholy fact which they reveal. Notwith- standing the advances which sanitary science is as- suredly making, an almost inappreciable decrease has taken place in the amount of mortality recorded; whatever may have been done of late years—and it is not a little—to improve the sanitary condition of the people, there is yet something wanting to be efiectively applied as a preventive, by which sickness and mortality may be, in a sensible degree, checked. If ignorance and neglect of the laws of health in- crease largely the general death rate, how much more destructive of life must these agencies prove in the case of the infant population ! It is a remarkable fact that the amount of infant mortality in England far exceeds any thing of the kind in any other part of the civilized world.* How is it that we, a highly refined, humane, and enlightened j)eople, in this respect fall so far below, not only less cultivated races of manldnd, but even some sjDecies of the animal creation ?f * In the Lcmcet of the 13th December last, appears a short paragraph headed “ Infant mortality in India,” in which it is stated that 80 per cent, is the rate of mortality among infants in that country, while in the poorest and most closely populated districts in England it is only 22 per cent. There must surely be some inaccuracy in the above figures; for it has been stated else- where that 43 per cent, is the amount of infant mortality computed to take place in all England, and these figures only represent ascerta/ined deaths; that is to say, only those which are registered or classified; but it is probable that the tables of the Kegistrar Genei-al would be much augmented as regards infant deaths, if some systematic cognizance could be taken of still-hirths. It is much to be hoped that ere long this important branch of the subject wiU come practically within the province of medical jurisprudence. t The Comparative Properties of Milks, pp. 6 &7. John Chui-chill and Sons.