REMEDIAL THEORIES AND EXPERIMENTS 239 



lated sins of their ancestors, or environmental con- 

 ditions into which they have been forced by powers 

 as remorseless as Fate; no matter, even, if the cause 

 of their inability to nurse their babies is their own 

 ignorance and folly, against which there was none to 

 warn them, — the fact remains that the babies must 

 be provided for. Do whatever we may to encourage 

 breast-nursing, we caimot escape responsibility for 

 the babies that languish and die because they are 

 fed upon dirty and disease-producing milk, or sub- 

 stances more deadly still. 



For more than ten years I have been haunted by 

 the terrible consciousness that thousands of baby 

 lives are needlessly sacrificed every year in the great 

 cities of the world, while we boast of the progress of 

 our civilization. For more than ten years I have 

 grappled with the problems of infantile mortality 

 according to my ability and strength, patiently and 

 carefully studying the results of investigations made 

 by others and making investigations on my own 

 account. For more than ten years I have watched 

 the experiments made by earnest men seeking to 

 find the remedy for the evil of excessive infant mor- 

 tality, mourning at every failure and glorying in 

 every gain, however slight it might be. As a result 

 of these years of study I feel entitled to say with 

 assurance that impure milk is one of the most pow- 

 erful factors making for a high infantile death-rate, 



