Letter from the Author published in the "Times," Feb. 4th, 1862.

Sir, - I think it will be a great satisfaction to those who have taken an especial interest in Infant Mortality to know that some of the chief hospitals of London have now under the consideration of their Committees and Medical Officers a plan calculated to make a great reduction in the mortality of infants, and in the deaths at all periods of life short of mature old age.

It is proposed to organise a department in connection with each hospital in which every patient on leaving the establishment will be thoroughly examined, to discover what damage has been received by the late illness, and also what hereditary and other predispositions exist to future disease. These points having been ascertained, each patient will receive written instructions as to the best diet, regimen, habits, clothing, and the like, for the prevention of a return of the illness from which he has just suffered, and for the prevention of other diseases or evil consequences to which he is liable through damaged organs, constitutional predisposition, calling in life, former habits, or the like. He will at the same time be given a card to admit him to a repetition of the examination after an interval of six months.

Everyone intimately acquainted with the causes of disease - the real, not the apparent causes - is fully aware that although the death may occur during the course of some well-known disease, to which it is therefore commonly attributed, yet that the cause of fatality in that disease is, in the majority of cases, due to the previous state of the person's constitutional health; that, therefore, it is the previous state of impaired or low health which is the real cause of death. So it is that one person dies and another recovers from the same disease.

Attention was drawn to these states of 'low health' by you, Sir, in the 'Times' of August 4, 1858, in an article which pictured in most forcible language the extreme frequency and the dire miseries of this 'low health.' The plan now under the consideration of the hospital authorities aims directly at the removal of this 'low health' and its consequences by instructing each individual in the means peculiarly suited to the preservation of health under his own special conditions of life. Should the plan be successfully carried out there can be no doubt that in the course of time it will have a remarkable influence in reducing the fatality of disease among the poor.

If I dared trespass further on your valuable space, I might point out the important influence on infant mortality exercised by the health of the poor man's wife, and the extraordinary ignorance which exists among these persons of the proper means, and of the importance, of maintaining their own health for the sake of their children. I might tell how, every day, we see the mother allow herself to become anaemic; the anaemic mother bear rickety children; and these rickety children swell the list of preventable deaths from bronchitis, whooping-cough, measles. These are matters which will especially engage the attention of those who carry out the plans to which I have referred.