INFANT MORTALITY IN THE AUSTRALIAN COLONIES.

Colonist, Volume III, Issue 277, 15 June 1860, Page 3

INFANT MORTALITY IN THE AUSTRALIAN COLONIES.

(From the Southern Cross,) We have before us some valuable statistical tables on the subject of infant mortality in the Australian colonies; —a question which all must admit .to be one of great and paramount interest to the future of these communities. There is every reason to believe that a much higher rate of mortality exists among infants than would be the case if due and sufficient precautions were taken, and if the parents were to take more pains to adapt their habits and modes of life to the climate and country they reside in. One would suppose, judging from the purity of the climate, the health and energy of the people who emigrate, and the abundant possession of the necessaries of life which they enjoy, that physical vigour would be developed in a high degree among the people. The persons who emigrate are, as a. general rule, the picked men of England; the sickly and feeble find no favor in the eyes of the Emigration Agents, and it is only the enterprising and able-bodied who are selected from the applicants. With regard to food and clothing, the lowest or working working classes V Australia are on a par in these respects with the middle classes of o,ur own country. Strong and healthy men . and women, Btrangers to the poverty and privations which they had ever endured at home, resident in a pure and healthy climate, ought to be, we should imagine, the parents of strong and healthy children. Such, however, is not the case, and this result is, we believe, traceable to preventable causes. A short time since, the Zancet, in an article on infant mortality in the metropolis, said:— It is amongst poor children that the mortality is incalculably greatest, and when it 13 considered what they undergo, and the conventional treatment to which they are subjected, we can only wonder how so many escape. "How-do you feed your child?" Hsks a medical man, compassionately looking at the emaciated little form which typifies hundreds daily brought to our hospitals. And this is the stereotyped answer—" She just has a taste of whatever I eat myself,"—meat, potatoes,—often gin; scanty nourishment drawn from the breasts whose secretive power cannot eliminate milk from a half-starved frame; and the unwholesome diluted milk of unhealthy, badlyfed cows is the nourishment afforded to thousauds of children, in this day of an enlightened age, in this capital, of a civilised country, "where we count the grey barbarian lower than the Christian child." It is to this want of due care and attention on the part of the parents that the high rate of moi'tality in Australia is mainly due. The unwholesome state of crowded cities.-has comparatively little to do with this infant mortality, and the peculiarities oi Australian climates* which have been so

frequently referred to, would not exercise any baneful influence upon infant existence if-/ordinary means' of counteracting them were adopted. "Care," to use the words of a great French authority, " is every thing, v and climate next to nothing, in the preservation of a child." It is a jest among the colonists that they wean their children on beefstakes and brandy. This may not be strictly correct, but the very fact of such a remark having been made affords some evidence that sufficient attention is , not generally paid to the wants and necessities of infant existence. - Referring to the statistics of New South Wales, we find that, while the birth rate is 55 per thousand in the hamlets, 41 in the city and 40 in the country, the mortality is in a very different ratio, being highest in the city and lower in the hamlets. The deaths at different ages during the year ending 1857 were:—

Reducing them to proportions per cent., we have in each 100 of the deaths—

The infant mortality in our own country is unfortunately very heavy ; in Birmingham the deaths under 5 years of age are 50 per cent.; in Leeds, 52: in London, 40-2; and in Manchester, where the attendance at the factories prevents to so great an extent the efficient discharge of domestic duties by the mothers, the mortality is as 55*4 per cent. Bat it would appear that in the hamlets around Sydney the mortality is even greater than that of Manchester by 3 per cent. And in Sydney itself it is 4 per cent, higher than in London. In south Australia the per centage of deaths under 5 years old is also higher than the highest known in this country. Taking the seven years ending 1857 we have the following results :—

Giving an average for the seven years of rather more than 21 per cent. Then, with reference to the number of births, the per centage of deaths under 5 years in this colony is lower than in Manchester, while with reference to the total who die of every age it is higher, as will be seen by the following table:—

Total 8,806 5,405 Giving as the average of the seven years nearly 62 per cent., as compared with 55 at Manchester. It is a feature in these returns that the rate of mortality shows a diminution in each of the years. In 1854 the per centage, with reference to all deaths, was the highest, being 65-3; in 1852 it was the lowest, being but 56*9. • The mean of the whole seven years was 61-35. The mean of the first four years was 61-5, while the mean of the last three years was 61*3, showing again a diminution. So that, whether computed with reference to the total births or total deaths in the colony, the mortality among infants exhibits a slightly decreasing ratio. Still there is much in the way of warning in the details presented to induce the most vigilant attention to the subject by heads of families and by conservators of the public health generally.The rate of infant mortality in Victoria, as in the other colonies, is also exceedingly high. The details of these statistics were given in the Australian Gazette a short time since. A paper recently published hy the Registrar General. of that colony throws some additional light upon this exfcessive mortality. He has very carefully accumulated data respecting more than 6,000 deaths under one year of age and of nearly 40,000 births* extending over a period of three years. Among the results deducible from these statistics are that the summer and theTsubsequent months, when the constitution has not recovered from the depressing influence experienced during the hot seasons, are the periods of the great mortality. The infant deaths for December are set down at 643 ; for January, 837; February, 825; March, 879; and April, 681. In winter arid spring the tables are reversed. In June and July the deaths are respectively 377 and 378; in August they sink to 294 and in September 274, while in October they rise to 300; and so the increase gradually proceeds until cool weather returns again. In this country the great causes ofinfant mortality are " smallpox, scarlatina, measles, and pneumonia," —diseases the first of which is " almost a total stranger and the rest of comparatively small import" in Australia. " But, on the other hand," we are told,, "dysentery, of a character hardly known at home, and diarrhoea and convulsions are at certain seasons such successful weapons in the hands of death in Victoria # as to demand all the wisdom ofthe wisest and the best skill of the skilful in hygiene and medicine to stay their frequently preventible ravages." Our contemporaries in the colony are, we are glad to see 4 fully alive ;io the evil

consequences of "permitting this state of things to continue, and the following very pertinent and sensible remarks are made upon this report of the Registrar-General by the Blelboimie Argus :—" Diarrhoea, dysentery, convulsions, atrophy, debility, premature birth, nervous diseases, diseases of the brain, paralysis, and epilepsy, are the chief scourges of infant life in this country; and their prevalence is mainly owing to the improper, habits of the parents before the birth of their offspring; the insufficiency of proper food, in main degree caused by the scarcity and high ■ price of milk, indispensable for young children; exposure to sun and heat; insufficient use of the cold-water bath; and confined, closa, and crowded houses. " All" these evils will require to be reformed before children, as a rule, can be born in strength or grow up robust in Australia. We may depend upon it that unless a salutary change of the kind we refer 'to, comes about, the physical degeneracy of the native-born, so sadly complained of beyond the Atlantic, will become stereotyped here also. Decline in such case would grow worse and worse from generation to generation, and if then the attraction for the European emigrant should for any cause happen to cease, the future of the Australian nation would be something very different indeed from what we have been formerly accustomed to predict for it." The Australian Medical Journal—^ publication of considerable merit and conducted with great ability—-contains remarks on the same subject from Dr. Mackenna, in a paper read by him before the Medical Society of Victoria. In this paper special attention is directed to the means of arresting the growing evil. The first plan proposed is that, of placing under medical surveillance those filling the position of wet nurses, and providing some guarantee that such persons are able to meet the increased demand made upon their secretive functions; and he proposes that a registry should be opened of those duly qualified, from among whom any mother, too weak or too heartless to nurse her own infant, may make a selection. A second point to which attention is directed is the necessity of providing purity of food, more especially of that which is the best nourishment, and which forms the chief food during the earlier period of life. ,

A third cause of this high rate of mortality is to be found in the ignorance prevailing among poor mothers respecting the proper management ot children. For this there is no legislative remedy, but much may be done by means of the agencies of societies and committees for distributing useful information, and hints for the guidance of mothers in this, most important matter of insuring that the next generation shall be possessed of something of that strength of constitution, of bone, and of sinew which their forefathers possessed and which are the special characteristics of Englishmen.

N.S Under 5 5 and under 15 15 and under 25 25 and under 65 C5 and upwards Age not specified S. Wales, l 2,019 2L3 294 1787 359 174 Country. 1,069 143 173 1138 273 107 Sydney. HamL 586 364 42 28 82 89 495 154 60 26 52 1« Lei Total all ages 4846 2903 1317 626

N. S. Wales. County. Sydney. Hamlets' Under 5 42 37 44 58 5 & under 15 5 5 3 5 12 & undev 25 6 6 6 6 25 & under 65 87 89 38 24 65 & upwards 7 10 5 4 Age not specified 3 3 4 8 I Total 100 100 100 100 100

Year. 1851 1852 1853 1854 1855 1856 1857 Born. 2.759 2,727 2,774 8,451 8/J44 4,488 5,183 Deatl ,hs under 5 years 591 625 808 880 1,025 661) 807 Total 25,326 5,405

Year. 1851 1852 1853 1854 1855 1856' 1857 Total Death 973 1,098 1,275 1,346 1,663 1,147 1,304 tis. Deatl ,hs under 5 years. 59 L 625 808 880 1,025 669 807