INFANT FEEDING. 
By Joseph W. Schereschewsky, 
Passed Assistant Surgeon, Public Health and Marine-Hospital Service. 
PART I.— INFANT MORTALITY IN RELATION TO INFANT FEEDING. 
Owing to the long duration of the period of infancy in human 
beings, as compared to that of the lower animals in general, it is 
obvious that the opportunity of environment to react upon our de- 
velopment is enormously increased over that afforded in the case of 
other living beings. 
The effect of prenatal influences upon our ultimate development 
receives no further accretions from the moment of our birth, and, 
apart from those congenital defects and states of debility, whose 
influence upon life are manifest from the outset, our subsequent 
growth and development are almost exclusively controlled by our 
immediate surroundings. 
More than any other component factor of its environment, food, 
the form and the methods of its administration, are capable of in- 
fluencing the future development and determining the fate of the 
newborn child. 
If this statement be true, we should expect to find that an investi- 
gation of the mortality rates of infants would furnish some relevant 
facts in regard to this question. 
Unfortunately, even at the present time infant mortality and the 
degree to which such mortality is influenced by improper methods of 
feeding is not a subject of general knowledge. True, it is known as 
a matter of casual information that the rate of mortality among the 
newborn is relatively high, yet few who have not paid attention to the 
matter realize, as Bergeron so graphically puts it, that the chances of 
a newborn child surviving a week are less than those of a man of 90 ; 
of living a year, less than those of a man of fourscore. 
Information as to the infantile death rate in this country is difficult 
to derive, owing to the small number of States within our registra- 
tion area and the poverty in detail of their statistical returns. The 
writer is, however, much indebted to Harrington, who has made an ex- 
tensive study of this question in a recent article from which many of 
1414— Bull. 56—09 44 (689) 
