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Show Cause of Infant Mortality. ( Dr. Homer Folks once prepared statis- tics showing that one-lifth of all the babies born in the tenements die before they are two years old. Ani they die because of a lack of fresh air, pure milk and w holesome food, asserts a writer in Outing. Before we knew much about the scientific care of babies, even parents par-ents of wealth dreaded the terrible sum-1 sum-1 mcr days, when the lives cf their little ! ones hung in the balance. Now we know that clean milk, clean surroundings, clean babies, are all that are necessary to insure perfect infantile health. In the tenements they do not know these things. Out of 10S mothers v.ho were questioned, seventy-nine had never heard how to fed'thair babie and ninety-five knew nothing cf the irn- portance of properly clothing' and rcc-ularly rcc-ularly bathing them. An examining A physician told a tenement mother that f her child could not so to th country until her head was absolutely free from nit?. -Nits, do you call them?" said the mother. 'They show that the child's hair is healthy. If it was not -hey couldn't grow there." Another mother was found feeding an unripe banana to a very young baby. "It will kill the baby," remonstrated the nurse. "What do you, who are so young, know about babies?" demanded the indignant in-dignant mother. "I, who have had children, chil-dren, know all about them." "How many babies have you had?" asked the nurse. "Six," replied the mother sadlv. And are they all at home?" asked the nurse. . Plied the mother, hugging her naby, "they are all dead but this one." fauch is the ignorance of those to a 2m the fresh air workers minister. And it is as much a part of their work to try to remedy this fatal ignorance as it is to overcome its effects by removing re-moving the children for a short time to the cool, open spaces that mean life. |