The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1894-03-26
WASTE OF CHILD LIFE.
troubles of Infants Usually Acquired,
and Not Hereditary.

news.
Or: Henry Dwight Chapman, of New
YORK, has been making a study of the
children In the Postgraduate Hospital In
that city, to which he is attached Amid
the normal conditions of everyday exist
ence, what Is more charming than to OBJ
serve child life, with its innocence, quaint
ness mes and beauty? But in a hospital, where
the child Is sufferer-mentally or phys
ically defective-the subject of misfortune
1t is q piteOuS object.
The most distressing feature is that the
chlid IS not responsible for its own I'M
happiness. In the cases studied by DR..
Chapman. which numbered co., there were
S22 males and 272 females, and they ranged
from ages of one week to four years In
the families twenty-five different nationali-
ties were represented. Among the living
fathers 245 were healthy and 113 were un-
and 70 were diseased. In ia instances the
wives had been deserted by their hus-
bands bands. who were idle and Incorporate.
poor and densSly-populated neighborhood
means so many neglected women and
pinched ill-clad and suffering children"
BUT even where extreme poverty existed
there was a disinclination to leave an in
FAINT or very young child In a hospital.
The fact was disclosed that the troubles
of the six hundred infants were usually
acquired and not hereditary. While a ten
dency to constitutional disease may be in
herted, ii is the bad surroundings and
faulty conditions of life that powerfully
predispose to illness.
Poverty and ignorance kill and cripple
HIOIS IMAM disease germs. IhuS Z0I OF the
cases were deprived of maternal nourish-
ment before the proper time, and 101 of the
babies never received it at all. Ricketts,, of
course, soon developed, with softening of
the bones and irritation of the nervous sys-
tenn. Almost all these diseases could have
been prevented by proper care and diet
The waste of child life in denSely popu-
lated centers, especially New York, is enor-
nous. Last year the bodies of 3,042 children
under five years of age were received at the
morgue, and nearly all were buried in Pot
terS field. They were killed by poverty and
ignorance Those that do not succumb are
cramped in the beginning of life by hunger
and cold, by Scanty training and equipment
and in every way insufficiently prepared
for the pitilesS competition that awaits
them in the fierce struggle for subsistence
There seems no specinc, according to the
physicians observation, for the poverty and
ignorance that are so widespread. The cause
Is Individual and social, and so must the cure
be. The individual must be educated and
strengthened physically, mentally and
morally. But individual Improvement re-
quires individual and prolonged work on the
part Of those who are better equipped. But
I in this physicians observation III females
In small area of a city with an earning
capacity of from 81 to s. a week, and yet 10
per cent. of the inhabitants dying in the
city do not accumulate enough in a lifetime
to bury themselves.
To correct this waste of human life there
is no remedy, but some reasonable form Of
cooperation. This is socialism, but social
ism in its highest -philosophically and
officially right. The proper socialism is only
the development OF a nobler individualism.