On some aspects of infant mortality in New Haven during the five months ending Nov. 1, 1884 / by E.H. Jenkins.

  • Jenkins, Edward H. (Edward Hopkins), 1850-1931.
Date:
[1885?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On some aspects of infant mortality in New Haven during the five months ending Nov. 1, 1884 / by E.H. Jenkins. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    circle. Each was morally the cleanest and best thing in it, and the death of each was a disappointment and a sorrow. But what of it ? The death of any one who has not reached the age for working, producing and helping in society, but who has the pos- sibility of all this within him, appears in itself considered a loss to society. An infant who has cost pain and care and labor which would otherwise have been immediately remunerative to his parents, whose chances of life are increasing each day at a very rapid rate, and who then fails and dies, is a loss to his parents and to society. He has been an expense; he might have repaid it by taking his parents' place in the world, but he died insolvent. Now it cannot be asserted that these children who died here last summer would or would not have been a help to society if they had lived. It is morally certain that some of them would have been only a hindrance. A certain number would have been drunkards, rakes, or paupers, and would have gone from the almshouse to the hospital and from the hospital back to the almshouse and in the end to the potter's field. Possibly one will conclude, all things considered, that the world has lost no more than it has gained by these deaths and that both the infants and the survivors are to be congratulated. In fact the subject is often dismissed in this way : Poor things ! They are saved a great deal of misery. Many of them were children of the very poor and the vicious. They are better dead than alive. Now this is all very true and very narrow. The statistics given are chiefly important, not for what they tell of those who are buried, but for what they indicate of those who are living ; not as a tale of past misfortune, but of present misery and future woe ; distress in which either those who are now in comfortable condition, or their descendants, will surely have a share. Two hundred and fifty-nine deaths mean also a large number —many times that number—of sicknesses. They mean that the same things which destroyed so many have poisoned and crip- pled others so that they will lead lives of discomfort to them- selves and their neighbors by reason of more or less enfeebled constitutions. They mean that many are growing up to be kept from starving or dying of disease by the money which the more thrifty are working to earn. More than this ; these deaths mean that as a result of over- crowding, uncleanliness and improper feeding, many have