REMEDIAL THEORIES AND EXPERIMENTS 225 



Take the French depots, for example. Dr. Peyroux, 

 a keen critic of the Gouttes de Lait, has pointed out 

 that they have not very materially reduced the in- 

 fantile death-rate, so far as can be ascertained from 

 the complete mortality returns of some of the cities 

 where they are established." But it could hardly be 

 expected that a depot should materially affect the 

 infant mortality rate of the city, when the number of 

 children attending it is ridiculously small in propor- 

 tion to the total infant population. In Paris, for 

 instance, there is an infantile population of over 

 40,000, but not more than 800 or 900 are cared for 

 by the Consultations de Nourrissons and Gouttes de 

 Lait.^ At Grenoble, to cite the case of a smaller city, 

 the average number of births during the years 1891- 

 1901 was 1357, but only 72 infants per annum were 

 fed from the Goutte de Lait}^ That these depots do 

 prevent a considerable number of infants from dying 

 is unquestionable, I think, by any person who has 

 studied them. At the same time, they touch only a 

 very small proportion of the infantile population. 

 Professor Budin has compiled statistics to show that 

 at his Consultation at the Clinique Tarnier during 

 five years the death-rate shown among the children 

 attending was only 46 per thousand as against 178 

 per thousand for the whole of Paris.^^ Unfortunately, 

 the figures are rather inconclusive, for the very vital 

 reason that the death-rate of 178 per thousand cited 



