ABSTRACT
During the latter half of the nineteenth and the initial third of the twentieth century, the United States (US) was the site of a sociomedical discourse on the prevailing rates of infant mortality, the causes of that mortality, and the various measures that could be adopted to reduce it. Beginning as part of urban sanitary reform (c. 1850s-1870s), the discourse gradually grew in scope, culminating during the Progressive era (c. 1900-20) in wide ranging public discussion and both philanthropic and government infant welfare activities aimed at saving the nation’s babies.1 Americans, of course, were not alone in discussing the rates and causes of infant mortality and in debating and implementing measures to reduce it. Almost every other industrialised nation saw similar infant welfare discussion and activity.2 Yet US infant welfare was distinct in a number of ways. Among the most salient was the amount of attention given to race. Indeed, while in other nations the question of race was bound up with the debates over infant mortality, in the US it played a much more critical role as a descriptive and analytic category in the collection, organisation, and interpretation of data on the levels, trends and causes of infant death.3
