50 ADDRESS 



future ones, if any there is, will be decrepit when born and are 

 counted amongst the dead. 



Jn New York city there are at best 1,000 beds for convalescents 

 of all classes; $5,000,000 bequeathed for convalescent homes by 

 an old man who died lately, are contested for the moral reason 

 that they are 5,000,000. The only Mr. Shrader, of Westchester 

 county, N. Y., has proven by the foundation of his Catherine 

 Rest that puerperal women can be nursed to complete health, 

 and their babies preserved like your healthy babies. Let there 

 be a thousand Shraders, and the generation of women with 

 life-long invalidism will soon be extinct, and the babies will 

 no longer swell the ranks of infant mortality. Why do I speak 

 of women and of infants at the same time? Unfortunately, 

 they cannot be separated, they suffer together. The sobs of an 

 invalid woman and the moans of a condemned baby are not heard 

 along the shrieks of a furnace or locomotive. 



What did I wish to say ? Something very prosy, viz. : If 

 you want to break up the infant mortality of the first weeks of 

 life, see that your young doctors can be made competent and the 

 indigent women supplied with a thoroughly informed midwife. 

 As long as you cannot abolish dire poverty, give no rest to your 

 legislature, none to your health department. No infant fit to 

 live must be sacrificed through the absence of a competent and 

 responsible midwife, who is taught enough of hygiene to prevent 

 fatal mistakes, and enough to know when it is time to send for a 

 doctor. 



Chairman: You have all seen from this address how intricate and 

 difficult the problem is and how much it deserves your sustained 

 interest and support. 



We cannot discuss any large public problem in Baltimore without 

 having recourse to the last speaker. I hope you will all realize what 

 a piece of altruism it is for Dr. Welch to come here and tell us how 

 to take care of somebody's else children. 



