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MEDICAL SECTION 



cause disease, and (4) that it should not be too 

 expensive or difficult of distribution. To the mother 

 the first essential seems the most important, to the 

 Public Health Authority the third, while the second 

 perhaps looms most largely on the horizon of the 

 clinician. I need scarcely say that a universally 

 suitable food is as impossible of attainment as the 

 philosopher's stone, yet perhaps too little attention 

 is paid to the idiosyncrasy of the infant. Of breast- 

 fed twins of approximately the same birth- weight you 

 may sometimes find that the one wastes while the 

 other thrives. The presence of two variables (the 

 baby and the food) often clouds our judgment ; one 

 baby acts as an advertisement for a food on which 

 the majority of its compeers would develop rickets ; 

 another is the graveyard of the reputation not only 

 of several excellent foods, but of that of the medical 

 man in attendance. In arriving at a sane judgment 

 on the merits of a food, full allowance must be made 

 for the variability of the human media. 



Before inquiring further into the suitability of 

 various foods for extensive use, it is well to try to 

 estimate the magnitude of the problem of artificial 

 feeding. In consequence of the Notification of Births 

 Act, and the visits that are paid to the homes of the 

 poor by women sanitary inspectors, we are able 

 to estimate more accurately than formerly what pro- 

 portion of infants are being artificially fed. In 

 Sheffield during the year 1910, it was found that 

 reliable data on this point could be obtained from 

 a total of 6,216 cases. Of these 3*5 per cent, were 

 artificially fed from birth, a further 10*2 per cent, 

 were weaned before the end of the first month of life, 

 and a further 10*9 per cent, before the end of the 

 third month. Making a rough estimate on this basis, 

 it may be reckoned that in the whole city, which 

 contains less than half a million inhabitants, there will 

 be over 470 infants each year who are bottle-fed from 



