Complete statistics are not available, but in places one-fifth or even
one-fourth of the babies born perish during this time. The mortality is
chiefly due to overfeeding and giving food of poor quality.
The average parent loves his baby. He loves the helpless little thing to
death. In Oscar Wilde's words, "We kill the thing we love." The babies
are killed by too much love, which takes the form of overindulgence.
About thirty years ago the well known physician, Charles B. Page, wrote:
"How many healthy-born infants die before their first year is
reached--babies that for months are mistakenly regarded as pictures of
health--'never knew a sick day until they were attacked' with cholera
infantum, scarletina, or something else. They are crammed with food,
made gross with fat, and for a time are active and cunning, the delight
of parents and friends--and then, after a season of constipation, a
season of chronic vomiting, and a season of cholera infantum, the little
emaciated skeletons are buried in the ground away from the sight of
those who have literally loved them to death. This is the fate of
one-third of all the children born. As a rule, babies are fed as an
ignorant servant feeds the cook-stove--filling the fire-box so full,
often, that the covers are raised, the stove smokes and gases at every
hole, and the fire is either put out altogether, or, if there is
combustion of the whole body of coals, the stove is rapidly burned out
and destroyed.
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