ABSTRACT
The gross measure of failure of hygiene is the occurrence of an excessive number of deaths of infants. The importance of breast feeding was strongly urged by Dr. Michael Underwood, who published A Treatise on the Diseases of Children in 1784. The long tubed feeding bottle of modern times, with its constant tendency to become foul, has only in the last few years been abolished from the nursery; a host of patent infants' food, intended as substitutes for cow's milk, or to supplement it, have been sold very largely. Some of the worst cases of scurvy rickets have occurred during their administration. The prevention of the excessive mortality in childbirth resulting from rachitic deformity of the pelvis should be begun 20 or 30 years earlier, immediately after the birth of the future mother. It is within the range of preventive medicine to prevent entirely rachitic pelvic deformities and thus greatly reduce puerperal mortality in the future.
