The incidence and mortality of breast- and artificially-fed infants admitted to hospital with infections.

Statements are often made and beliefs expressed about the relative values of breast and artificial feeding. In 1934, Grulee reported a study of some twenty thousand infants who had been followed in well-baby clinics in Chicago up to the age of nine months. The breast-fed babies were 48-5 per cent. of the total, while another 43-0 per cent. were partially breast-fed. There were approximately half as many infections in the breast-fed as in the artificially-fed group and only one-tenth the percentage of deaths. The results were definitely in favour of breast feeding. In analysing a large number of post-mortem records, Ebbs (1938) found that infants who died and were found to have otitis media and sinusitis were practically all artificially-fed at the time of onset of the infection. During ward rounds in the Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, the following questions were raised: (1) Are there more artificially-fed babies admitted to this hospital with infections than breast-fed babies? (2) Is the chance of survival from an infection greater in a breast-fed infant than in an artificiallyfed infant? In order to try to answer these questions the records were examined of one thousand five hundred consecutive admissions of babies under twelve months of age with infections, admitted to the Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto. Table 1 shows the age incidence of these children with infections. It will be noted that after the first two months the number in each month is fairly uniform.