INFANT MORTALITY IN AUSTRALASIA.

Globe, Volume IX, Issue 1308, 29 May 1878, Page 3

INFANT MORTALITY IN AUSTRALASIA.

There is soon (says the “Australasian ”) to be good reason for the inquiry which Dr. Gosse has lately discussed in a lecture in Adelaide, “ Why do babies die in South Australia ?” when we find that during a period of ten years the death-rate among the infant population before completing their first year was 157 in every 1000 births, as compared with 126 in Victoria, 125 in Queensland, 104 in New South Wales, 102 in New Zealand, and 101 in Tasmania. This statement makes, as Dr. Gosse showed, the infantile mortalit.y in South Australia to be 25 per cent, above that of Victoria, 26 per cent, above that of Queensland, 51 per cent, above New South Wales, and 55 per icent. above Tasmania. In England and Wales the proportion during ten years was 154 per 1000 births, and the mean death-rate in London 161 per 1000 births, although influenced by all the disadvantages of city life, is still only a little higher than that of South Australia, where the population grows up in what we should consider the healthy influences of life in the country, or in very small towns. Dr. Gosse in his lecture paid a high tribute to the climate of the colony, and acquitted that of any share in producing the exceptionally high rate of infant mortality. It may bo said, as respects this point, that the intense heats of summer possibly influence this mortality more than the lecturer suspected. But as the question is not how is it that the mortality is so high, but how is it that it is so high as compared with the other colonies, the summer heat, being a factor common to all, may safely be omitted from the comparison. But when wo come to the causes that he assigns for the high death-rate, it seems to us that those also are common to all of the colonies in an equal degree. At least, Dr. Gosse made no attempt to show that they existed in higher force in South Australia than elsewhere. The use of patent medicines and soothing syrups, and other quack remedies, neglected drainage, parental drunkenness, early marriages, improper feeding, and so on, are causes of infantile deaths by no means limited to South Australia, and the lecturer did not endeavor to prove that they existed in a higher measure there than elsewhere. Grant that they are all potent causes of mortality among young children everywhere, the lecture, to be of any scientific value as an answer to the question with which it set out, the relatively high rates of deaths in that colony, should have shown that the local causes existed in a degree of potency adequate to the production of the effect. And this, so far as we can see, was not shown or attempted to be shown, and the question of the very high death-rate of infants in South Australia, as compared with the other colonies, remains absolutely unanswered.