INFANTILE DEATH RATE.

Te Aroha News, Volume XXVII, Issue 43115, 18 July 1907, Page 4

INFANTILE DEATH RATE.

Addressing the members of the St.John Ambulance build in Wellington. Dr. Bennett refen ed to the seriousness of the infantile death rate, and discussed the people’s responsibilities. The lecturer admitted that it, was- not so easy to rear |a child as it was in the days of long ago, for the people now had to deal with a heredity of nerve® —a, legacy of civilisation —not known then. British women must study the problems of motherhood if they were to keep up the reputation which, it, was chronicled', made Napoleon say after one of his defeats : “Oh, those English mothers!” The mother to-day must be a trained and reasoning being, one who kept in step with the advance of knowledge of hygiene and physiology. She must no longer trust to her instinct to guide her. It was a sad fact that with the decrease in the rate of adult mortality there was no decline in the death rate of children under one year'of age. During 1905 in New Zealand the deaths of infants under 12 months old totalled! 1600, and competent motherhood could have saved many of these lives. The importance of natural feeding was emphasised, and the speaker urged that n'O' woman should abandon it without repeated trials.