J46 MEDICAL SECTION 



reach the age of one year with a weakened consti- 

 tution and a lowered resistance to disease. The 

 prevention of this morbidity in infants is almost as 

 important as the prevention of the actual deaths. 



In causing infantile morbidity and mortality, 

 poverty has a very great effect, but I have no doubt 

 that much can be done by education to lessen the 

 effects of poverty and its attendant evils. Poverty 

 usually goes with bad housing, irregular work of the 

 father, work out of the home by the mother, and all 

 these form a vicious cycle, one factor reacting on and 

 producing another. Taken all together they have a 

 very bad effect on the infant. 



I should like to state here my opinion of the evil 

 effects of bad housing and of the need that there is 

 for remedying this. Overcrowding contributes largely 

 to our high infantile mortality, and to my mind the 

 only remedy for this overcrowding is the decentraliza- 

 tion of our large works. With improved means of 

 transit for goods this ought to be possible. Working 

 people must live near to their work, and, if all the 

 large works are close together, overcrowding and 

 bad housing are inevitable. If families are crowded 

 together in unhygienic surroundings, no education, 

 no care, and no management can prevent an undue 

 amount of disease ; we often see efforts at teaching 

 of hygiene almost completely nullified through want 

 of space or appliances to carry out the lessons taught. 

 Remedies in housing will no doubt come, and we must 

 not relax our efforts at teaching because, whatever 

 the housing conditions, a great deal can be done by 

 education to lessen the effects of poverty. 



In Manchester, at the Schools for Mothers, we 

 are conducting an inquiry in two marked-out districts 

 in which there has been previously little systematic 

 attempt at instruction. With the help of the medical 

 officer of health we are trying to supervise every 

 child in each district for the first year of its life, and 



