THE POSSIBILITIES OF MATERNAL NURSING IN THE 

 PREVENTION OF INFANT MORTALITY 



By THOMAS S. SOUTHWORTH, M. D., New York 



While many measures for the ultimate reduction of infant 

 mortality which cannot be expected to bear fruit in the immedi- 

 ate future, must be discussed at these sessions, it is my good 

 fortune to deal with a measure which has a daily and even 

 hourly application if a larger number of babies born are to sur- 

 vive their first year of life. 



In presenting my subject, three questions naturally arise: 



What advantages has maternal nursing? 



Why is it less common than formerly? 



How may it be encouraged and made successful? 



Were this audience made up entirely of medical men, and not 

 in a large part of laymen earnestly intent upon the solution of 

 this serious problem, it would be unnecessary for me to restate 

 the well-known fact that competent maternal nursing offers the 

 new-born infant the best chance of survival. In support of this, 

 I must state certain other accepted truths, namely, that as before 

 birth, so after birth, there is a physiological dependence of the 

 infant upon its mother which does not cease until the infant has 

 made considerable progress in the extra-uterine phase of its 

 existence. The breast milk of the mother, being expressly 

 adapted by nature to the peculiar needs of the human infant, 

 stimulates its digestive processes,, is digested and absorbed with 

 less effort and waste, favors more immediate and well-rounded 

 growth, and contains certain principles apparently not present in 

 other milks, some of them of a protective nature, which render 

 the nursing infant practically immune to various infectious 

 diseases. 



The influence of maternal nursing does not, however, stop 

 here. No statistics of infant mortality give us any real clues to 

 the full influence of breast feeding, unless the deaths of infants 

 from all causes are separated upon the fundamental lines of 

 whether they were nursed or whether they were bottle-fed. 

 Physicians know, and have known for a long time, that a vastly 

 greater proportion of bottle-fed infants die of malnutrition, sum- 



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