orable are likely
to make babies sick. In order to remain healthy, they must have exactly
the right kind of food, in the right quantities and at the right times;
their sleep, exercise, and clothing must be carefully regulated; they
must be protected from careless handling, from nervous strain, and above
all, from the many kinds of infection to which they are peculiarly
susceptible. The life of a baby fortunately can be controlled almost
completely; when properly regulated it offers, therefore, an unequalled
opportunity to see how hygienic principles work out in actual practice.

The primitive mother's instinct to nourish and protect and succor her
helpless child was the original form of nursing. Instinct alone,
unfortunately, has never accomplished much in preserving health. The
human race has now had an experience in the care of infants that extends
over thousands of years. Yet today we are still, on the whole, less
successful in keeping babies alive than we are in raising domestic
animals; we still allow society to continue, like a modern Herod, in its
ruthless career of slaughtering the innocents.

About 14 babies out of every 100 born in the registration area[1] of the
United States die before reaching the age of one year, while in some of
our industrial cities as many as 25 out of every 100 born die before
they are a year old. Most of these deaths are preventable. Thus, in a
few American cities, the death rates have been so reduced that fewer
than 10 babies out of every 100 die before completing the first year;
while in Dunedin, New Zealand, as a result of the work of the Society
for the Health of Women and Children, the infant death rate has been so
reduced that in 1912 only about 4 out of every 100 babies died before
they were a year old.

While ignorant mothers, who may or may not be uneducated women, and
contaminated milk, are as a matter of fact, chiefly responsible for our
high infant death rates, yet as we have already seen, every factor in
the environment has its effect upon a baby. This fact has led Sir Arthur
Newsholme, an eminent English authority, to say:

"Infant Mortality is the most sensitive index we possess of
social welfare. If babies were well born and well cared
for, their mortality would be negligible. The infant death
rate measures the intelligence, health, and right living of
fathers and mothers, the standards of morals and sanitation
of communities and