464 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



parts of the body has less vital resistance to the poisons 

 produced by the organisms. 



Infant Feeding 



Children often suffer from over-feeding and from being 

 given unsuitable food that sets up gastro-intestinal irritation, 

 vomiting, and diarrhoea with various manifestations of nervous 

 irritability due to absorption of bacterial poisons by the blood. 

 The greatest preventable cause of infant mortality and con- 

 stitutional weakness of the child after birth is improper and 

 insufficient feeding. Other preventable causes of infantile 

 mortality are congenital syphilis and tubercular meningitis. 

 Collective responsibility should not be undertaken to replace 

 parental responsibility, but to educate and assist it ; and 

 this is the method adopted by health visitors. This system 

 of educating the mothers is beginning in a right way by 

 giving every infant a better chance for growth of body and 

 mind. Collectivism and individualism should work together 

 by improving the mother's health and instructing her how 

 to nourish her offspring. Now, there can be no doubt that 

 the natural food for the infant up to the time that it has 

 teeth is the mother's milk, which is the only perfect food 

 for the baby during the first nine months of its life, and 

 only under exceptional circumstances is it justifiable to employ 

 artificial feeding, in the interests not only of the infant but of 

 the mother also. For not only has nature provided the milk 

 glands, but also an internal secretion by the cells which occupy 

 the position in the ovary whence the ovum that developed into 

 the child came, and this internal secretion has the special 

 function of stimulating the secretion of milk. Prof. Karl 

 Pearson in his second Chadwick Lecture showed the fallacy 

 of statistics in regard to infant mortality and various modes of 

 feeding in town populations. His argument was that the 

 statistics showed that infant mortality only corresponded with 

 the health and habits of the parents ; it did not seem to matter 

 whether the child was breast fed or artificially fed, nor did it 

 seem to point to one form of artificial feeding being superior to 

 another. Are we therefore to conclude that it does not really 

 matter whether a child receives the nourishment nature itself 

 provides or not ? No ! The reason why artificial feeding of 

 infants appeared in statistics to be good, or better than breast- 



