EDWARD BUNNELL PH^LPS, M. A., F. S. S. 179 



oped as it were by the summer heat, are most apt to exercise 

 their baneful influence in raising the infant mortality rate to its 

 top notch. Then it is, that the poor and ignorant are most apt 

 unknowingly to bring about the death of their babies by doing 

 the things that should not be done, and leaving undone the 

 things that should be done, for those same babies. It is notori- 

 ously true that diarrhoea! diseases are primarily responsible for 

 the high infant death rate of the summer months, in other words, 

 that the greatest danger then confronting the babies of the tene- 

 ments is that whose principal preventive and antidote, abundant 

 ice and pure milk, they are then least likely to have. And for 

 these and many other reasons, as I see it, that summer infant 

 mortality, at once class mortality and seasonal mortality, is in 

 every way the high spot, the most conspicuous phase, and the 

 most hopeful mark of the crusade to which this Association is 

 committed. 



With the world at large it is the array of large figures, and 

 not mere percentages, which makes the deepest impression. 

 Consequently, in endeavoring to bring out the importance of the 

 summer infant death rate I have first tabulated a comparative 

 statement, by weeks, of the births and infant deaths in the great- 

 est city on this Continent and its various boroughs in the 

 third quarter of 1910 and 1909 (See Chart V), and have then 

 emphasized the disheartening regularity of that sharp rise in 

 infant mortality by a somewhat similar, though less detailed, pre- 

 sentation of corresponding figures for an entire State, Connecti- 

 cut, for which monthly comparative figures for both years were 

 available. These figures are to be found in Tables IV, V, and 

 VI, attached to this paper, and not only show how conspicuously 

 the infant mortality rate mounts up in that season of the year, 

 but how inflexible the increase seems to be, despite all the efforts 

 now being made to grapple with it. The contrast between the 

 summer rate and the annual rate of infant mortality is sharply 

 brought out by the fact that in the third quarter of 1909 the 

 ratio of deaths under age 1 to registered living births in the 

 City of New York was 169 per 1,000, as against a ratio of only 

 130 for the entire year 1909 that is to say, was larger by an 

 even 30 per cent. and that the infant deaths In that quarter 

 amounted to 32.15 per cent, of the total for the entire year. In 

 the State o? Connecticut, the infant death rate in the third quar- 

 ter of 1909 was 192, as compared with one of 131 for the entire 

 year 1909, an excess of nearly 47 per cent. 



But those statistical facts are mere mathematical demonstra- 

 tions of a well-known truth; a much more important showing 

 of the tables in question is the fact that, despite all the wide 

 fluctuations for individual weeks and individual boroughs in 



