236 
Its potency is nevertheless evident from a statement by J. Wicliffe 
Peck, chemist to the Hospital for Sick Children, London, that the 
average quality of milk offered for sale throughout London is so 
defective in fat and nonfatty solids that a child at six months, whose 
weight should increase about 4 ounces weekly, suffers each week a loss 
in diet of 3J ounces of fat and nonfatty solids when its ration of 
fraudulently manipulated cow’s milk is based on the supposition that 
the milk is of standard quality. Such low standard milk tends to 
produce marasmus and rickets. Marasmic children present a decided 
predisposition to bronchitis and summer diarrhea and thus indirectly 
an increase of infant mortality is brought about by diluted or 
adulterated milk. 
STATISTICS OF INFANTILE MORTALITY. 
The malign effects of hand feeding of infants and the consequent 
impress made upon the mortality returns become manifest by an 
examination of vital statistics, but to gauge the exact ratio of infant 
deaths resulting from artificial feeding is very difficult. 
The reports of the United States Census Office on mortality for the 
year 1905 show that in the registration area with a population of 
33,757,811 there were, of 545,533 deaths at all ages from all causes, 
105,553 deaths among infants under one year of age. Diarrhea and 
enteritis caused the death of 39,399 infants in the first year of their 
life. In England and Wales all the deaths registered during the same 
year numbered 520,031 and were in the proportion of 15.2 per 1,000 
persons living. The deaths of infants under one year of age were in 
the proportion of 128 per 1,000 births in the year as compared with 
150 per 1,000, the mean proportion in the years 1895 to 1904, inclusive. 
The proportion of infant deaths in England and Wales during the 
year 1905 is the lowest then recorded, although closely approximated 
in some previous years. 
Commenting upon the official statistics of infantile mortality the 
Registrar-General of England writes : 
It has frequently been pointed out in the reports that although the general 
mortality in this country has steadily fallen in the course of the last half cen- 
tury, nevertheless infants in the first year of life have not shared in the benefit. 
About one-fifth part of the total loss of life in the first year after birth takes 
place within a week of that event, while by the end of the first month the pro- 
portion reaches one-third, and by the end of the third month it exceeds one-half. 
From the first to the fourth month diarrheal diseases steadily increase in de- 
structiveness, after which month they become gradually less fatal, although 
they still contribute seriously to the death rate throughout the first year of age. 
The rate given for the whole of England and Wales does not fairly 
represent the infant mortality of the cities of England. It was stated, 
for example, at the annual meeting in 1906 of the subscribers to the 
