A Conference on prevention of infant mortality : Lampson Hall of Yale University New Haven November 11 and 12 1909 ; third mid-year meeting American Academy of Medicine (specializing in medical sociology).

  • Conference on Prevention of Infant Mortality (1909 : New Haven, Conn.)
Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A Conference on prevention of infant mortality : Lampson Hall of Yale University New Haven November 11 and 12 1909 ; third mid-year meeting American Academy of Medicine (specializing in medical sociology). Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    ers why it is supplied. Its responsibility is three-fold: to the infant; to the family; to the community. To the child the responsibility of the milk depot lies in attempting to supply a proper milk, i. e., its own mother's milk. An index of the value of a depot lies in the number of nursing mothers visiting it; not in the amount of modified milk sold. At each depot there should be a museum to exhibit all that relates to child hygiene from the prenatal period to the school period. To the family the depot is responsible for teaching the whole household how to keep the children well—not merely how to avoid letting them die. There should be classes for little mothers and expectant mothers, as well as for mothers with children. Toward the community the depot has the responsibility of developing mothers capable of bringing up their children to maturity, and of destroying the possible element of truth in the statement that children grow up in spite of their parents, not by means of them. (6) The responsibilities of general relief agencies in the prevention of infant mortality Mr. Sherman C. Kingsley, superintendent of the United Chari- ties of Chicago Abstract: The particular responsibility of relief agencies lies in the fact that their work is in the very homes where babies die in largest numbers. Our philanthropy and our municipal housekeeping ought to be brought to this test: Do they furnish forth conditions that are right for the baby? Where the white hearse goes most often, there you will find the weakest places in your municipal housekeeping. The particular responsibility of relief agencies lies in the fact that their work is in the very homes where babies die in largest numbers. Our philanthropy and our municipal housekeeping ought to be brought to this test: Do they furnish forth conditions that are right for the baby? Where the white hearse goes most often, there you will find the weakest places in your municipal housekeeping. The charity organization society, or similar agency, is the natural agency to arouse public interest in the question of infant mortality in a city where it has received scanty attention. In such a place it will probably run afoul of the question of registration of births, of general insanitary conditions, of the problem of desertion, of the problem of the registration of midwives. There are also certain pressing and im- mediate responsibilities resting upon charitable organizations in con- nection with their own special work: they should not send pregnant women to wash and scrub; they should make possible a reasonable period of convalescence after the baby is born; they should see to it that the family lives in rooms consistent with health for the baby; they should not encourage a mother to wean her baby in order to go back