I would not leave this subject without insisting upon the urgent need of
State or Federal supervision of the manufacture and sale of patent
infant foods. The mortality from this one cause alone is enormous. There
has been no satisfactory or comprehensive inquiry into this important
matter in this country, and it is therefore impossible to get reliable
figures. In Germany, where the law requires that the death certificate
of an infant under one year of age must state what the mode of feeding
has been as well as the cause of death,—a wise provision which might
with advantage be adopted in this country,—it is possible to ascertain
approximately the extent of the evil. The records show that of children
fed on artificial food 51 per cent die during the first year, while only
8 per cent of the children exclusively nursed by their mothers die
during the same period.[170] No one familiar with the work of our
infants’ hospitals can fail to be impressed by the large number of cases
of illness and death in which artificial feeding appears as a primary or
contributing cause. I have gone over the record books of many such
hospitals in different parts of the country, with the almost invariable
result that artificial foods appeared to be the source of trouble in
many cases. Most of the patent foods, one might almost go farther and
say all of them,[171] are unhealthful because of the starch they
contain, which the little infant stomachs cannot digest. Many of the
cheaper kinds of patent infant foods upon the market are, as previously
stated, little better than poisons. The testimony of the greatest
authorities upon the subject of infant feeding, backed by the grim
eloquence of hospital records and the death-rates, points irresistibly
to the need of some strict supervision of the production and sale of
artificial foods for children. Whether this should be done by the
establishment of certain standard formulæ, or by compelling the makers
to submit certified samples for official analysis, is a question which
only a body of experts should decide.
The question of reducing the rate of infant mortality is, it will be
seen from the foregoing, most complicated. It is not without reluctance
and misgiving that I have ventured upon this detailed discussion of
measures to that end, and in doing so I have kept from speculation and
theory, confining myself almost entirely to those measures which have
been tested by experience and found beneficial. If Berlin has been able
to reduce its infantile death-rate from 200 per thousand to 80 per
thousand, Australia to reduce its rate from 15 per cent to 8 per cent;
if Rochester can reduce its summer death-rate of infants by 50 per cent,
it is surely evident that, given the determination to do so, we can at
least hope to save one-half of the babies who, under present conditions,
are perishing each year. In other words, it is possible to save almost
100,000 babies annually from perishing in the first year of life. No
greater, worthier task than this ever challenged the attention of a
great nation.