REMEDIAL THEORIES AND EXPERIMENTS 189 



physically able to nurse their infants, and all the 

 influence of the medical staff is exerted to persuade 

 them to do so where it is not clearly a physical im- 

 possibility. The encouragement of breast-feeding is 

 the primary purpose of the work. 



At birth and during their stay in the hospital prior 

 to the mothers' discharge, the infants are weighed 

 and their weights and measurements and general 

 physical conditions carefully noted and recorded. 

 Then, after the mothers have been discharged, they 

 have to bring the babies to the hospital weekly for 

 further examination, so that week by week the record 

 of growth is kept and the physician knows exactly 

 the progress any child is making. The number of 

 infants who are bottle-fed is relatively small, for the 

 proportion of mothers who are unable to nurse their 

 infants at the breast through physical disability is, 

 in view of other statistics upon the subject, surpris- 

 ingly small. According to Dr. Maygrier, of the 527 

 infants cared for at the Clinique d' Accouchement 

 Tarnier during the years 1898-1902, no less than 

 448 were breast-fed and only 79 bottle-fed. But we 

 must not forget, in considering these figures, that the 

 women were all charity patients, coming from the very 

 poorest classes, among whom the decline in nursing 

 ability is commonly least marked. Where breast- 

 feeding is impossible, the Consultations de Nourrissons 

 supply sterilized milk for the infants in bottles daily, 



