I am not sure that the statistics of today will not still show the same sad disproportion between the death of infants and that of adults. The slaughter of the innocents is not so great as it once was, but it is certainly thousands of times to great, still.

For this horrible state of affairs someone must bear the blame. All of this suffering and premature death is not inherent in the nature of things. Parents, educators, doctors, theologians, food manufactures, boards of health, politicians--these all must be found guilty of murder.

Of 9,873 children who died in Massachusetts in 1870 under five years of age, more than one half of the deaths were due to digestive derangements. Of 11,382 children under twelve years of age cared for in the dispensary for sick children in New York City from 1867 to 1869, inclusive, 3,243 were suffering with bowel disorders.

In 1870 Dr. E. Ballard, of England, published a very thorough article on "Infant Mortality" in which he showed that in five years (from 1863 to 1868) there were in England 314,242 deaths of infants under one year of age, of which 277,852 were due to digestive disorders.

The following is a table of infant mortality showing the death rate in children under two years of age in New York City from diarrheal causes, and all other causes for the two months of July 2nd. to Sept. 3rd. 1910, given in weeks.

Week ending:	Diarrheal causes	All causes
July 2nd	172	43
July 9th	265	559
July 16th	424	709
July 23rd	373	622
July 30th	384	656
August 6th	288	559
August 13th	270	520
August 20th	237	468
August 27th	246	494
Sept. 3rd	220	447
TOTAL	2,886	5,456

The death rate for children under two years of age for the whole year 1909 was, diarrhea! causes 5,126, all causes 20,716.

Assuming that the death rate was approximately as great in other large cities, it gives us a death rate of 10,000 children in July and August in the ten leading American cities. Basing his estimate on these figures and applying them to the whole country, Eugene Christian said: "We have a funeral of 90,000 innocent little ones July and August of every year who died from stomach and intestinal troubles alone, which are the most easily controlled and preventable of all so-called children's diseases. This army of little ones are clearly victims of unpardonable ignorance."

Again he said: "If cholera, smallpox or yellow fever should become epidemic in New York and over 5,000 adults should die of one of these diseases in sixty days, the whole city and state would be thrown into a panic. Doctors, ministers, churches, health boards, rich people and noisy newspapers would take a hand in the fight."

He is undoubtedly right, but why are we not just as anxious to save our children? I suspect that the truth of the matter is that we are not nearly so anxious about the welfare of our children as we are about upholding some ridiculous dogma of medicine or church. At any rate, we are still killing them, with the help of the doctors, at an awful rate.