DR. HELEN MACMURCHY'S PAPER H7 



1908 was 256. What has been said about correction 

 for stillbirths and for incomplete registration, and 

 about French-Canadian families of thirteen to nineteen 

 children, and about institution mortality applies 

 especially to Ottawa and Montreal. There is another 

 thing. Infant mortality is largely an institutional 

 mortality, many babies not born in Ottawa at all go 

 to swell that terrible death-rate. 



The institution for the baby is a failure. Nature 

 will have none of it. Her plan (except in the case 

 of twins!) is "One baby one mother." The institu- 

 tion baby does rjot live. Put the baby in an institution 

 and soon there is no baby. No Baby, No Nation. 



In New York City, in 1911, 42 per cent, of all 

 deaths under one year of age occurred in institutions. 



Take Woodstock, Ontario. There is a general 

 impression that we have no aristocracy in Canada. 

 This is a mistake. We have two .orders of aris- 

 tocracy. One order is known to history as the United 

 Empire Loyalists ; the other order was founded by 

 the British Army officers who, serving in Canada, 

 became Canadians, and settled in some of the most 

 fertile parts of Ontario. They knew the value of 

 vital statistics. Besides, in Woodstock we have a 

 health officer who does not, when you write and ask 

 him about infant mortality, reply that you will find 

 the figures in the Government Report, but writes you 

 a four-page letter, and then writes another four-page 

 letter within four weeks, giving another year's records 

 just issued, without being asked. Here he gives the 

 exact numbers, tells precisely about the stillbirths, 

 and writes a line for each dead baby, stating the 

 exact cause of death, and whether or not the baby 

 was nursed at the mother's breast, and which were 

 illegitimate and which were twins, and everything 

 else one can think of. That is the kind of health 

 officer who has in his district the lowest infant mor- 

 tality in Canada in 1909, 73-4 per 1,000 births. (It 



