394 proceedings: academy 



i45th meeting 



The 145th meeting of the Academy was held jointly with the Medical 

 Society of the District of Columbia and the Anthropological Society 

 of Washington on Wednesday March 31, 1920. The meeting was 

 called to order at 8.20 p.m. in the assembly hall of the Carnegie In- 

 stitution of Washington by President F. R. Hagner of the Medical 

 Society. Sir Arthur Newsholme K.C.B., formerly Chief Medical 

 Officer of Health of the Local GoYcrnment Board of England, and 

 during the past season Professor of Hygiene in the School of Public 

 Health of Johns Hopkins UniYersity, Baltimore, Maryland, deliYered 

 an address on The uational importance of child welfare work. The 

 address was illustrated with lantern slides. 



The lecturer sketched briefly the history of the development of child 

 welfare work in England. It arose out of the gradual awakening of the 

 people to the risks of unhygienic euYironment, emphasized by the 

 ravages of the great plagues such as cholera and typhus fever. The 

 growth of industrialism and the increasing population of the cities are 

 really at the bottom of this awakening. The health reforms of the 

 past seventy years are a part of the attack made on the problems 

 raised by these two conditions. 



The study of these problems and their remedies has increasingly 

 emphasized the fact that the death rate in childhood is unnecessarily 

 high. The study of the death rate of children carries us still farther 

 back and shows that the care of the mother immediately before and 

 after the birth of the child is as necessary as the care of the children 

 themselves. 



To reduce this needless loss of mothers and children, which is com- 

 parable in magnitude with the loss of life in the Great War, the follow- 

 ing conditions must be ameHorated: (i) Careless, shiftless, or im- 

 moral motherhood or fatherhood. (2) Ignorance, especially of civic 

 duties, of the most desirable ideals of family life, and of the elementary 

 methods of proper housekeeping and cooking. The ignorance of the 

 poor is more serious than the ignorance of the rich, since the ignorance 

 of the rich can be made up for from without. (3) The lack of the 

 essentials of life and health such as proper food and clothing and expert 

 assistance at critical periods. (4) Ignorance of the public and its 

 eaders as to the actual conditions in the community, which can be 

 remedied either by surveys in specialized fields, or, better, by com- 

 petent statistics which are in reality a continuous survey. It is in this 

 feature particularly that the public health movement in the United 

 States is hitherto lacking. The statistics of birth and puerperal 

 diseases are most strikingly inadequate in the United States, and no 

 solid progress can be made until the data by which such progress can 

 be measured are made more complete and dependable. 



Nutrition is the be-all and end-all of a child's life up to the age of 

 seven, and all other things must be subsidiary. The agencies to be 

 considered and improved are play, sleep, cleanliness, exercise, food, and 



