20 City Homes on Country Lanes 



ber of our men killed in battle and dying from wounds. 

 Except tuberculosis, it is the greatest single cause of 

 death to women between 25 and 50 years of age. It is, 

 therefore, a fundamental element of health. This is par- 

 ticularly true because the vast proportion of the 4,- 

 800,000 ex-service men were not injured at all ; whereas, 

 when these particular men were born, practically every 

 woman was confined to her bed from periods ranging 

 from a few days to several weeks. Of those permanently 

 crippled, either slightly or seriously, the number is far 

 less than the number of women who were permanently 

 injured in these 4,800,000 confinements. Many more 

 women than service men were completely disabled. 



What has been said about hospitals, and the care of 

 mothers immediately before and after childbirth, has a 

 direct bearing on the subject of infant mortality. An- 

 other item to be recorded on the side of city advantages, 

 is the work of popular education concerning mother- 

 hood which is constantly carried on. Among the poorer 

 mothers in large cities, the city health department, Red 

 Cross and other agencies, render a degree of help and 

 advice that is not available to country mothers ; and in 

 the large cities there are little mothers' leagues to which 

 girls between the ages of 12 and 14 belong, and in which 

 they receive instruction in the care and feeding of 

 their little sisters and brothers, and pass it on to their 

 mothers. 



The excessive infant mortality discovered in one sur- 

 vey was summed up as being due to "the mother's 

 ignorance of proper feeding, of proper care, of the 

 simplest requirements of hygiene. To this all the other 

 causes must be regarded as secondary." Surely this 



