10
per cent. in Norway. Infantile mortality is higher in manufacturing
districts, lower in those which are agricultural, and varies from 16 per
cent. in Lancashire to 9 in Dorsetshire. It is then evident that
mortality in infancy is in part dependent on remediable causes; and of
this there is no better proof than the fact that the mortality in
England under one year has been reduced from 15 per cent. in 1872 to 13
per cent. in 1882.

It would lead us far from any practical purpose if we were to examine
into all the causes which govern the liability to disease and death
during infancy and childhood, in the different ranks of society. We must
therefore limit our inquiry to those conditions which are met with in
the class to which my readers may fairly be assumed to belong.

_First_ among the causes of sickly infancy and premature death may be
mentioned the intermarriage of near relatives. The experience of the
breeders of animals, who, by what is termed breeding in and in,
undoubtedly obtain certain qualities of speed, or strength, or beauty,
does not apply here. They select for their experiments animals whose
qualities in these respects are pre-eminent, and eliminate from them all
who do not occupy the first rank. In family intermarriages, however, it
is rare that any consideration is regarded, save that of wealth; and the
fact remains, explain it as we may, that the intermarriage of near
relatives during several successive generations is followed by a marked
deterioration of the children, physical, mental, and moral; and by the
intensifying of any hereditary predisposition to consumption, scrofula,
and other constitutional ailments which form the _second_ great cause of
early sickness and mortality.

These are facts known to all, which yet it is not easy to represent by
figures. All the world is aware that consumption is hereditary, that
consumptive parents are more likely than others to have consumptive
children; and a fourth of all the patients admitted into the Hospital
for Consumption at Brompton stated that the disease had existed in one
or other of their parents.[1] Scrofula, which is another disease closely
allied to consumption, is hereditary also; and hip disease, disease of
the spine, abscesses, and enlarged glands in any members of a family,
point to risks for the offspring which should not be forgotten, how much
soever mental endowments, personal beauty, or the charms of disposition
may be considered, and