OUR BABIES.

Dominion, Volume 7, Issue 2138, 2 May 1914, Page 11

OUR BABIES.

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Published under th« auspices of tli« SoCh'fd Health of Women and "It ii nleor to put up a. fcnco at tho top of a preoipic* than to maintain an ambntanos at tho bottom." SACRIFICE DF BABIES IX EUROPE. In. tho opening lines of his book on 'Hospitalism,' 1 published in Berlin last year, Dr. Ludwig Meyer says that, owing to the extraordinary mortality which took place in their institutions for infants,. tho German physicians came to the conclusion that it was practically impossible to keep babies alive in them.

I have translated and summarised tho I following from Dr. Meyer's preface:— "Twenty-five years ago about-80 per cent, of sucklings, in our. institutions died. In the infants' department of the Charito, for instance, in the years 1874-ISB4. out of 4109 children under six months 3209, or 78 per cent., died. J'rom 187G-1899 the mortality in the first year of life of all sucklings who had como under care in tha Berlin "Waisonliaus" averaged 30 per cent. In 1889:tho number of beds was raised from 19 to 24, with a view to improving matters by keeping the' infants •longer in the institution. The mortality of the next year gave a ,gruesome answer to the new arrangement. In 1899 42.5 per cent, died, and in 1900 49 per cent. died. The small number of 24 beds was actually responsible in one year.for the deaths 0f'345 infants! This led to tho reorganisation of tho care of orphan babies,, and an improvement took place." However,_ even now, the infantile death-rate in the most up-to-date ■ institution in Berlin is about 20 per cent. : But for the amazing infantile deathrates which .are admitted to havo'prevailed in the institutions of the United States and Western and Middle Europe our readers would havo'been unablo.to credit the mortality record of the great Moscow Foundling Hospital, as communicated only last month by a cor-

respondent to the Cliristchurch "Pross' : under the heading:—

GOD'S RAKE. MASSACRE OF INNOCENTS IN MOSCOW. Moscow, March 2. The Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, Moscow's Governor, Count L. H. Mouravieff, and many other mighty persons, aro deep in discussion of the "Massacre of the Innocents." This massacre (nothing like-it has been seen since Herod's day) is. the terrible slaughter of 1-abies that goes on in Moscow's Foundling Hospital. Everyone in Moscow knows the Foundling Hospital—the "Vospitatelni Doin"—a vast, white barrack-like house, probably the Empire's biggest building, which lies on the banks of the Moscow River. Nobody can help knowing it, for from it every day issue from 10 to 50 colbns of little children who have done no one harm, except the harm of being born into the world. Since this charitable institution was founded it has put nearly a million babies to death, and despite "science" and : "civilisation," and "the progress of medicine," it is niore fatal to put into it to-clay than it was in the barbarous age of it's founder, Catherine the Great. For though in the first years of foundation 60 per cent, of the foundlings died before one year of life was finished, that is nothing to what happens now. Of the 119,470 foundlings . brought . into the "Dom" during tno decade ending 1911, 90,859 were dead within a year. Last summer a member of the Moscow Municipal Assembly called the "Vospitatelni Dom" a ''-'great lethal chamber; but. somewhat expensive! If they must all be killed, why not kill thorn at once.This remark was called forth by a newspaper report that 207 children brought into the hospital during Easter week, 135 were dead before tho end of July. Moscow wits call the big institution "Bozhya grablya," or "God's rake," for there js a proverb that "God rakes in everything at the end"; and a baby sent to tho "Dom" is almost as sure to be raked into the gravo as is a sentenced man who already has tho noose round his neck.

WHAT ABOUT THE SURVIVORS? Does any child come unscathed through tho ordeal of the Moscow Foundling Hospital? ' From what we havo seen of other institutions with high infantile death-rates (either on this sido or on tho othor side of the world), we can safely say that in such cases tho survivors all tend to bear tho cruel brand of rickets and other disabilities which they can never .throw off . Contrast this picture with the typical strong, rosy, bright, and''happy babies as they go out of the Karitane Baby Hospital. Our nurses havo indeed good reason to fool a deep satisfaction in the work they are doing.