SIR GEORGE NEWMAN'S ADDRESS 271 



it can congratulate itself on the present position of this 

 movement. It seems a very few years ago that the interest 

 in this great problem was minus and the interest now cer- 

 tainly is plus. There has been an enormous growth in 

 public opinion. There has been an awakening on almost all 

 sides, and, best of all, a practical result in the very remark- 

 able and almost phenomenal reduction in infant mortality. 

 I am one of those who attribute that reduction not wholly 

 but largely, and more largely than anything else, to the 

 advance which has been made upon the main lines of the 

 policy of this Conference. I was reading the other day 

 with much interest the four or five complete tables which 

 we now have presented every year in the RegistrarTGeneral's 

 return of the analyses of the deaths of children under i year 

 of age. Those are tables which were not formerly pro- 

 duced. I look upon the production of that table year after 

 year as one of the most valuable pieces of scientific evidence 

 with regard to infant mortality which we possess. I was 

 reading from the first table down to the last from 1907 to 

 1910 and comparing the causes of death in infants in these 

 four years, and I do not think it is only an episode or only 

 an accident that the decline in the death-rate of infants has 

 been more marked in the conditions which respond to an 

 educated motherhood than in the conditions outside the 

 sphere of education and control. I think that is so. If it 

 be so it is an extraordinary piece of evidence of the pre- 

 dominant value of the influence which has been set going 

 in schools for mothers and otherwise upon the active period 

 of motherhood in this country. For instance, the decline 

 which has taken place in that great group of diseases which 

 we call the diarrhceal diseases, and in the group of diseases 

 classified as miscellaneous, which include the great group of 

 lung diseases, the reduction of 7 in 1910 has been double 

 or three times the reduction which has taken place in that 

 great root of disease which we think upon as immaturity. I 

 have made the practice myself in thinking of this question 

 of dealing with the diseases of children in three groups. 

 First the great group of conditions which we call imma- 

 turity the group of conditions over which we have no 

 direct control; a group of conditions due almost entirely to 

 the physical condition of the mother. Of course I am 

 generalizing, but it is a group of conditions which on the 

 whole are due to the physical condition of the mother. Then, 

 secondly, there is the group of lung conditions typified by 

 bronchitis and pneumonia which are due mainly to exposure 

 and to the fact that the child has come into a cold world; 

 because, take it as you like, there is an enormous change in 



