Abstract
RELATIVE VALUE OF FACTORS INFLUENCING INFANT WELFARE.—In Parts 3 and 4 of the first volume of Annals of Eugenics, Miss Ethel M. Elderton concludes her exhaustive study of data from Rochdale, Bradford, Blackburn, Preston and Salford on infant viability and summarises her conclusions. These, both positive and negative, are of fundamental importance. The factors, which are shown to be more or less closely associated with viability, are the health of the mother, the health of the baby at birth and, of much less significance, the maturity of the mother and the position of the child in the family. The evidence is conflicting; but in some towns there appears to be a rather heavier death-rate among the infants of women under twenty-three years of age. Miss Elderton has also formed the opinion that there is a higher infant death-rate among the first-born which may be concealed during epidemics of diarrhosa. Association with the habits of the parents and the occupation of the father is small; so is that with all other environmental conditions, e.g. poverty, whether judged by the income of the family or the wage of the man, and housing; while no evidence is afforded that children born at the end of a large family suffer in vitality, or that bottle-feeding in itself causes a high infant mortality. Nor, so far as infant mortality is concerned, has indoor sanitation any advantage over outdoor sanitation. The whole trend of the evidence is in favour of the view that the infant death-rate is selective. From the point of view of the race, also, the success of health visitation and inspection is in the right quarter, tending to assist chiefly the better portion of the community. Miss Elderton urges very strongly the need for fuller information to decide whether parental health and habits cause environmental conditions or whether these are responsible for parental health and habits. Much of the available evidence favours the first of these alternatives.
Article PDF
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Research Items. Nature 118, 98–100 (1926). https://doi.org/10.1038/118098a0
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/118098a0
This article is cited by
-
Untersuchungen in der Chinolinreihe
Naunyn-Schmiedebergs Archiv für Experimentelle Pathologie und Pharmakologie (1932)