36 SOME: CHECKS TO INFANTILE MORTALITY 



ness, you too could provide wonderfully cheap and wholesome 

 food for such people as those mothers. 



The rules of the establishment are very simple. Any woman 

 nursing a child can come in. She may or may not be poor, she 

 may be anything she pleases, the only thing required being that 

 she have a child to nurse ; nothing else is asked of her ; no ques- 

 tion is put; she is welcome and is fed. 



People at first thought that the plan would not work well; 

 that those who had some little means might come and be fed 

 for nothing. But it did not prove so, the reason being apparently 

 that there is not a better, a more earnest specimen of humanity 

 than a mother who nurses her child. Those who come are 

 earnest women who would be ashamed to take a meal when they 

 could pay for it; and it has happened more than once that a 

 woman coming for a month or two would one day say, "I shall 

 not come tomorrow. Now I can work and earn my own living 

 and the baby's." You will, I am sure, join me in wishing God- 

 speed to Henri Coullet and his wife, and success to their work, 

 owing to which by feeding the mother they feed also and save 

 the nursling. 



Without insisting on many other works due to public or pri- 

 vate enterprise and meant to help growing children, such as 

 "creches," "pouponnieres," etc., I shall only add that one more 

 problem connected with the others has seemed to us of great 

 importance. We have started the teaching of hygiene in our 

 primary schools. In each of them very simple lessons in hygiene 

 are given and cleanliness is enforced. Thanks to a legacy from 

 a kind-hearted citizen some money prizes are bestowed on the 

 most successful teachers. An inquiry was made on the general 

 result of that teaching and a report was sent me a few months ago 

 stating that, of course, it was very difficult to ascertain minutely 

 the effect on such a majss of children scattered all over the coun- 

 try, but that so far as could be seen the result was very good, 

 the effect being that not only the child but also the house of his 

 parents was better kept. It is a case, not yet fully developed to 

 be sure, but yet a case of contagious care and cleanliness. 



The outcome of those efforts is already felt and the old tables 

 of mortality have to be corrected. It is no longer true in any 

 part of the territory that out of two children one is sure to die. 

 The length of life has been increased and its usefulness, too. 



We are now confronted by the future, and what must we do 

 in the future? Your chairman has very well indicated it with 

 that combination of learning and kindness of heart which be- 

 tokens the good physician. 



What must be done and what might be the motto of your 

 Association can be stated in three words, three words from a 



