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366 INFANT MORTALITY.
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
A # Intakttiie Death-Kates. De. W. T. Ga...
dependence of the young on the care and support of others , as circumstances inevitably leading * -whatever deteriorates the general
health of communities to act -with far greater energy on the younger portion ; to consider also thatat the age referred tomany of the
causes of a preternatural ratio , of adult mortality must , be altogether kept out of view , for , from the intemperance and dissipation , and
from the many fatal accidents so frequent in various perilous occupationsthrough overwork and anxieties " that blanch at once the
hair , " , the young are wholly exempt . To the following special agenciesplaced in -what appears to me the order of their
impor-, tance , are we , I apprehend , to attribute the excessive infantile mortality occurring in . our large communities .
1 . Overcrowding and vitiated air , imperfect drainage , and deficient supply of light .
2 . Deficient nutrition . 3 . Want of hospitals for the sick children of the poor .
4 . Too early marriage . 5 . Neglect of illegitimate children .
To these may be added the causes -which are more general in their operationviz . the modifying influences of climate and
posi-, tion ; parental ignorance , leading to the neglect of hygiene generally , and particularly productive of disease from errors in diet * and
clothing . The frequent and reckless administration by ignorant parents of the most powerful pharmaceutical preparationsandin
Scotland , neglect of vaccination . Though common to country , and , town districts , these acquire an immense increase of power in the
latter ; and all of them , while having a more extensive action , and telling with far greater severity on the children of the very poorest
and those immediately above them in the social scale , yet possess a marked influence in increasing the fatality in the young of the
middle and upper classes , by giving increased intensity to contagious emanations , and spreading their influences far beyond the
localities in which they are generated . That impure air , resulting from overcrowding , imperfect
ventilation , and decaying refuse of any kind , is by far the most fatal and widely spread of the morbific agents to which the young are exposed
and that the most potent among the physical causes of disease is , still in active operation in our midstare admitted facts . Looking
to the overcrowded houses in which , the numerous children who are dally carried to our public dispensaries are immured , considering
that the atmosphere in which they sleep and constantly breathe is loaded with impuritiesis it wonderful that few of them derive
benefit from the remedies , prescribed , and that they are mostly carried back to their malarious homes but to die ? Is it not more
wonderful that any of them live to transmit again to their enfeebled offspring maladies whichin circumstances analogous to those in which they
were originally developed , in the parents , can but acquire additional „
malignity in future generations ? . .
366 Infant Mortality.
366 INFANT MORTALITY .
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), Feb. 1, 1861, page 366, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01021861/page/6/
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