The Influence of Feeding on Infant Mortality

Infant feeding is recognized as having a profound influence on the life and health of the infant. In the West, where, before the war, the decline of breast feeding was causing anxiety, many studies were made of the reasons for this failure at one vital phase of the reproductive cycle. In India, there is little statistical indication of the position regarding the establishment and maintenance of breast feeding./The following data collected during an analysis of record cards maintained for the field area covered by the staff and students of the Lady Reading Health School, Delhi, is therefore of interest not only as evidence of the high incidence of breast feeding but also as tentative support for the clinical experience of the danger to the child life associated with artificial feeding in the early months of life, and of the detrimental effects of prolonged breast feeding, without additional diet supplements, in the population group studied. / Material studied.?The cards analysed include'