Child hygiene / by S. Josephine Baker.

  • Sara Josephine Baker
Date:
[1925]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Child hygiene / by S. Josephine Baker. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    outspokenly based upon this idea than that of other coun¬ tries. The era of “blood and iron” and the preparation for world conquest included the building up of a physically sound citizenry, and part of the preparation for war was adequate protection of child life. England made no preparation for a child-hygiene program until the Boer War occurred. The high percentage of physical defects found in the enlisted or drafted men at the time of the Boer War shocked the health authorities and other interested persons in England, and as a result that country started its system of school medical inspection. The effect of the recent World War in stimulating health work for children is well summed up by Emma Duke, statistical expert of the Children’s Bureau, who stated in an address made in 1918 that “the great loss of life in this disastrous war has so thoroughly aroused public interest in the subject in Europe that one of the war economies most prominently urged and generally accepted there is economy in babies. “Few Europeans to-day discount the value of war equip¬ ment, yet England’s practical men and women are urging that ‘babies are of greater import than battalions and truer dreadnaughts.’ Germany designates its present rein¬ vigorated efforts for the conservation of infant life as ‘movements of increasing and improving national efficiency.’ France tells her citizens that the combat against such of their enemies at home as alcoholism, tuberculosis, and infant mortality is of pressing import and of vital necessity, and that infant mortality is now a problem of the life and death of the nation and all other problems are secondary. “These countries, and even Belgium with all her burdens, and the small neutral countries divert attention from details of fighting and appeal to patriotism in language that every one understands. Dr. Louis C. Parkes, before the Royal Sanitary Institute, estimated that two years of war cost the five principal belligerent nations (England, France, Russia, Germany, and Austria-Hungary) nine millions of
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