Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 87.djvu/194

190 to succumb to infantile diseases, a frequent prey to rickets, and almost certain to be backward in teething, walking and talking. Moreover, a physician of wide experience has said that disuse of the mammary gland has a tendency to manifest itself in the next generation when the baby girl in turn becomes a mother, while the reverse is equally true. Impress upon her the fact that the milk is often slow in coming, and that nearly all mothers can, if they persevere and are in fair health, nurse their babies for at least three months, while a full year is better. Let it be thoroughly understood that bottle-feeding is a grave misfortune if unavoidable and, if avoidable, an unnatural wrong. Let anything and everything which may be found to interfere with this essential function—as social dissipation, overwork and worry, either before or after marriage,—be relinquished in favor of that simplicity of living and wholesome attitude toward life which should restore and preserve a normal American womanhood.

The progressive little state of New Zealand has for some time boasted the lowest rate of infant mortality in the world. It was reported in 1912 at 51 per 1,000 births, or less than half the (estimated) rate for the United States as a whole. During the years from 1907 to 1912, it is said that the rate in Dunedin, a city of about sixty thousand inhabitants, was reduced 50 per cent, through the activity of a volunteer society called the New Zealand Society for the Health of Women and Children. It is earnestly to be hoped that organizations of women in this country will follow the example and methods of this society, which are described for our benefit in a pamphlet issued by the national Children's Bureau. Taking a few of our oldest cities and states for purposes of comparison, we find that in Connecticut and Massachusetts more than twice as many babies die out of each hundred born; in Rhode Island, three times as many! In the city of Dunedin, during the past year (1913), only 3.8 died in every hundred; in Los Angeles—one of our very best cities—9.7; in Pittsburgh, Pa., 15; in Lowell, Mass., 23!

The New Zealand society, though a private organization, receives the benefit of government aid and influence. Here, as elsewhere, the cooperation of public and private agencies has proved an effective means of social reform. The main features of the program for public health affecting our subject, are: (1) State registration of nurses; (2) registration of midwives; (3) government maternity hospitals; (4) supervision of infant asylums; (5) complete registration of births.

The society is officered by women and its work is mainly educational. It consists of the instruction of mothers and potential mothers through demonstration lectures, newspaper articles, pamphlets, etc.; the