Mr. John Burns delivered the presidential address at the National
Conference on Infant Mortality held at Caxton Hall, Westminster, on Wednesday. While admitting the serious- ness of the evil, Mr. Burns refused to take a despondent view of the subject. He believed that infantile mortality had for the last two or three years shown a tendency to decline, and that the decline synchronised with the increasing sobriety of the nation as a whole. The drink habit was the chief cause of this wastage; another cause was the employment of married women, which in some districts doubled the general death-rate of the neighbourhood. Personally he would support a proposal that no married woman should be allowed to go to work three months before, or to resume work until six months after, the birth of her child. Improper feeding and ignorance were also sources of great danger, and he attributed the great improve- ment in regard to infant mortality in Battersea to the fact that it had fewer public-houses per thousand of its popu- lation than any other parish ; that it was well provided with parks and open spaces ; and that it had good sanitation as well as a sterilised municipal milk depot. But these institutions, though good in themselves, were not good if they superseded the natural feeding of infants. For further information on the subject we would refer our readers to the valuable work recently written by Dr. Newman, reviewed on p. 951.
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