Excerpt from A Statistical Study of Infant Mortality

Practically simultaneous with the first National Conference at Westminster, an exposition was held at Berlin for the pur pose of inaugurating a comprehensive study of all the various phases of the infant mortality problem, and some idea of the scope of its work may be gained from the mere announcement that the exposition was continued for nearly three weeks. In its issue of Oct. 13, 1906, Charities and the Commons presents a summary of the work of the exposition, in part as follows: Accompanying the exhibits were exhaustive explanatory leaflets and monographs by the most celebrated specialists, and a catalogue containing every possible and minute detail to instruct and enlighten. A bare outline even of the rich mass of material presented would go far beyond the limits of our space, and give subjects for numbers of articles. The striking feature of the exhibit is the increasing solicitude of governments to concern themselves in questions affecting the well-being and happiness of people, and the rapidly increasing co-ordinat'ion between private, or voluntary, and civic and national, or au thoritative, reforms. The conditions of infant mortality in the German Empire have for a long time and with reason been the cause of_grave anxiety to German social and political scien tists, since statistics have been showing that, of the infants born annually, or one - fifth, do not survive the first year of existence. This disquieting fact has given rise to the founding of an institute, where, as a central point for the whole empire, the subject of infant mortality, its direct and accessory causes, will be studied with a seriousness worthy of the subject, and with all the cc - ordinated thoroughness and science known to the German municipality and the German medical profession. From the side of medicine is to be given the fullest inquiry into physiological, and from the municipality into social, contributing causes.

In September, 1907, an international conference on the sub ject was held at Brussels, under the name of the Second Inter national Congress of Gouttes de Lait, and it was decided thatits scope should be extended, and that the next congress should be termed the International Congress for the Protection of Infant Life. Were any further evidence of the increasing interest in the subject necessary, it possibly might be supplied by citing the fact that the subject selected by the Council of the Royal Statistical Society for essays in competition for the Howard Medal in 1908 - 09 is: ' A Statistical Study of In fantile Mortality in Great Britain and Ireland, and of its Causes.

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