OUR BABIES.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VIII, Issue 664, 29 April 1914, Page 2

OUR BABIES.

Published under the auspices of the Society for the Health of Women and Children. " It is wiser to put up a fence at the top of a precipice than to maintain an ambulance at the bottom." SACRIFICE OP BABIES IN EUROPE. In the opening lines of his book on "Hospitalism," published in Berlin last year, Dr Ludwig Meyer says that owing to the extraordinary mortality which took place in their institutions for infants, the German physicians came to the conclusion that it was practically impossible to keep babies alive in them. I have translated and summarised the following from Dr Meyer's preface:—

"Twenty live years ago abuut 80 per cent, of sucklingß in our institutions died. In the infanta' department of the Charite, for instance, in the years 1874-84, out of 4109 children under six months 3209, or 78 per cent, died. From 1876-1899 the mortality in the first year of life of all sucklings who had come under care in the Berlin " Waisenhaus" averaged 30 per cent. In 1899 the number of beds was raised from 19 to 24, with a view to improving matters by keeping the infants longer in the institution. 'lhe 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 of 345 infants! This led to the reorganisation of the care of orphai 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 have prevailed in the institutions of the United States and Western and Middle Europe our readers would have been unable to credit the mortality record of the great Moscow Foundling Hospitals communicated only last month by a correspondent to the Christchurch Press under the heading:—

GOD'S RAKE. Massacre of Innocents in Moscow. Moscow, March 2nd,

The Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, Moscow's Governor, Count L. H. Mouravieff, and many other mighty persons, are 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 babies that goes on in Mocow's Foundling Hospital.

Everyone in Moscow knows the Foundling Hospital—the" Vospitatelni Dom" —a vast, white barrack-like houße, 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 ten to fifty coffins 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 more fatal to be put into it to-day than it was in the barbarous age of its founder, Catherine the Great. For, though in the first years of foundation 60 per cent, of the foudlings 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 the decade ending 1911, 90,859 were dead within a year.

Last summer a member of the Moscow Municipal Assembly called the "Vospitatelni Dom" a lethal chamber; but somewhat expensive. If they must all be killed, why not kill them at once." This ramark was called forth by a newspaper report that of 207 children brought into the hospital during Easter week, 135 were dead before the end of July. Moscow wits call the big institution "Bozhya grablya," or "God's rake," for there is a proverb that "God rakes in everything at the end"; and a baby sent to the "dom" 5b almost as sure to be raked into th.e grave as is a sentenced man who already has the noose round his neck.

WHAT ABOUT THE SURVIVORS? Does any child come unscathed through the ordeal of the Moscow Foundling Hospital? From what we have seen of other institutions with high infantile death rates—either on this side or the other of the world—we can safely say that in such cases the survivors all tend to bear the cruel brand of rikets 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 Earitane Baby Hospital. Our nurses have indeed good reason to feel a deep satisfaction in the work they are doing.