BULLETIN OF THE American Academy of Medicine. VOLUME XI. 1910. EASTON, PA.: 1910. THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF MEDICINE is not responsible for the sentiments expressed in any paper or article published in the Bulletin. LEADING ARTICLE. THE AIMS AND PURPOSES OF THE NEW ASSOCIATION FOR STUDY AND PREVENTION OF INFANT MORTALITY. The American Association for Study and Prevention of Infant Mortality was organized last November because a serious and generally unrecognized condition exists in our country. For centuries it has been universally accepted that there must be a larger death-rate among infants than in any other age period. This has been looked upon as a providential dispensation or as an inexorable decree of fate. Only within the last few decades has adequate study of the situation been made in civilized countries, and any estimate attempted of the tremendous political and social loss to the race which this large mortality among infants entails. The "brute force of figures," as Dr. Cressy L. Wilbur, perhaps our greatest authority on vital statistics in the country, expresses it, in his latest report on the subject, that for 1908, is more impressive than any argument. In the registration area of the United States comprising about one-half the total population nearly one-fifth of all the deaths were of infants under one year, and the deaths of children under five years of age constituted one-fourth of the total mortality. Prof. Irving Fisher estimates that 47% of the deaths among infants and 67% of the deaths among older children may be prevented by approved sanitary methods. Of the approximately 400,000 deaths occurring |