SYMPOSIUM ON PUBLIC HEALTH PROBLEMS 1? 
dents in our colleges and universities than we have of the unfit 
in our institutions for the defective; our future leaders must 
be taught as never before, the use of available scientific know- 
ledge in the promotion of health and in the production of men- 
tal and moral superiority. 
INFANT MORTALITY AS A PUBLIC HEALTH 
PROBLEM 
EmMa DUKE, STATISTICAL EXPERT, CHILDREN’S BUREAU 
WASHINGTON, D. C. 
One might say infant mortality is not a public health prob- 
lem: it is THE public health problem. Infant deaths (that is, 
deaths of babies after their birth but under one year of age) 
constitute one-fifth of all deaths at all ages, and, physicians tell 
us, at least half of them are preventable. Deaths before birth 
are said to be even more numerous than infant deaths, 
Some years ago France, appalled at the small margin be- 
tween births and deaths, took steps to lessen the number of in- 
fant deaths, and Germany and England have not been far be- 
hind her. Congress, in creating the Children’s Bureau, as- 
signed to our own country the task of studying this question. 
In spite of all the study that national governments have given 
the subject, the problem is not yet solved. The hopeful thing 
though is that in some places where serious efforts have been 
made a reduction in the infant mortality rate has actually oc- 
curred. 
The great loss of life in this disastrous war has so thorough- 
ly aroused public interest in the subject in Europe that one of 
the war economies most prominently urged and generally ac- 
cepted there is economy in babies. 
Few Europeans today discount the value of war equipment, 
yet England’s practical men and women are urging that “babies 
are of greater import than battalions and truer dreadnaughts.” 
Germany designates its present reinvigorated efforts for the 
conservation of infant life as “movements of increasing and 
improving national efficiency.” France tells her citizens that 
the combat against such of their enemies at home as alcoholism, 
