178 INFANT MORTALITY'S URGENT CALL FOR ACTION 



months in making the infant mortality rate what it is than in any 

 other season of the year. In his paper on ''Infantile Mortality 

 and Its Principal Cause Dirty Milk," the late Dr. Charles Har- 

 rington, secretary of the State Board of Health of Massachu- 

 setts, remarked apropos of the seasonal distribution of infant 

 mortality: "From the facts and figures thus shown it might 

 be inferred that all infants under one year of age are in great 

 danger during the hot summer months, but this is far from being 

 the case. Not the three summer months, but the first three 

 months of life, are the dangerous period/' Unquestionably true 

 though this statement is, so comparatively few accurate records 

 of infants' deaths by ages expressed in months are available and 

 there is such a wealth of information as to the seasonal distribu- 

 tion of infant mortality, that public attention has much more 

 graphically been drawn to the abnormal dangers of the summer 

 months, and in my judgment the unusual infant mortality of that 

 season of the year offers the foremost strategic point of effective 

 attack for movements like that of this Association. 



I think it was Mr. Homer Folks who once said, in a lecture 

 which I had the pleasure of hearing, that he was afraid there 

 was but one real ! y promising method of attacking tuberculosis 

 so as to arouse the public on the subject, and that was, "to 

 yellow-journalize the movement," or bring forward and rivet 

 attention on the high places, the conspicuous features, of the 

 white plague, so to speak. I am inclined to believe that the 

 same principle applies to this infant mortality movement, and 

 that the most vulnerable point of attack, as it were, is the infant 

 mortality rate at the highest point, namely, that of the summer 

 months, and the causes primarily responsible for that high rate. 

 It is at that season of the year that the subject of infant mor- 

 tality invariably receives most attention at the hands of the 

 press, then it is that summer nursing corps like that which has 

 done such excellent work in New York of late years, for illus- 

 tration are temporarily at least disseminating information as 

 to the proper care of babies among the class which most needs 

 such information, and it is in the third quarter of the year that 

 the infant mortality rates are most apt to set people thinking 

 on the subject. 



Of course the fundamental causes of which Dr. Holt spoke 

 are operative the year around, but it is in the summer months 

 that those luxuries for the poor, abundant ice and pure milk, 

 play the most important part in determining whether the babies 

 of the poor shall live or die. Then it is that the unbearable 

 heat of the tenements drives their unfortunate occupants of all 

 ages into the streets, to the fire escapes, and to the roofs, and 

 then it is, as I see it, that poverty, ignorance and neglect, devel- 



