The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1909-05-20

very F aGa1, put Omall FOX
 Hasn't Scored a Death Sipce
 1903.
 The baby's bottle ranks as destroy CT of human life with the four or five greatest of deaths allies. This is sub- stantially the information furnished by the report of the State Board of Health, but recently transmitted to the General Assembly.
 The deaths from infantile diarrhoea numbered 1.146 in 1907,, and 919 in 1908. It will be seen, by scrutiny of the charts which the wise board has fur nished with its report, that the ma- jority of these deaths occurred during the hot months of July, August and September and that the mortality was confined closely to infants brought up on the bottle, which leads the board to recommend the most assiduous at tentiOn to the milk supply, and strenu- ouS cleanliness in all that concerns the bottle fed baby's dinner.
 The bottle ranks almost with pneu- monia, consumption and Bright's dis ease as a killer. It is far more dan ge-ous than diphtheria, scarlet fever. whooping cough. measles and many other childhood diseases. the very name of which makes mothers face blanche with terror.
 As eor small pox the disease, which makes whole communities panic strick- en. it is not even to be mentioned; not because Connecticut is a we'll vac cinated state, but because small pOx is disappearing disease.
 Pneumonia has been the champion destroyer of human life in Connecticut for some years now. In 1908, 1,409 year before. 1,739. Consumption in 1908 was the cause of death in 1891 cases. In 1909 death was caused by Bright's disease in SPA eases; by apoplexy, in 1,0O6 cases: by the awful cancer, in
 Brignt's disease. apoplexy and can cer are diseases that are on the in crease. They are almost entirely ma1adies of adult years. Why they should he increasing the doctors do not know, unless it is that more babies live than used to live to reach adult years. But in the case of cancer there is Taeenstan g s4 @ goe sems that lumpy jawed cattle are killed and the meat eaten. But be the reason what it may, cancer grows more threatening.
 The year 1907 was a very deadly year. Most diseases appeared to be working overtime. In every 1000 per sons in Connecticut I'll died, and this the board says. But in 1908 the health of the people was better. Only 15.4 in every thousand died. and this was the lowest rate since 1879.
 Small pox appeared with IS cases in 1907. In 1908 only five cases were re- ported. All of these cases were rigid ly quarantined. Nobody knows what might have happened if they had not been.
 All of the progressive doctors be- lieve that if the other infectious dis eases could be quarantined as rigor- ously as small pox that they too would be checked Of course they are not and hence there were 1.791 cases of diphtheria, reported in 1907 with 238 deaths. and 1.561 cases reported in 1908 with 195 deaths.
 There were 2.3S1 cases of measles in 1907 with T8 deaths and 2,SS7 cases in 1906 with s4 deaths. Measles is one of the diseases that parents do not fear much. hence the children who have measles are not isolated Hence epidemics of measles are more wide spread.
 Scarlet fever showed 1.400 cases in 1907 with 67 deaths, and 1,6S7 cases in 1908 with 57 deaths
 Now we are beginning to see how a mother may base her fears on some rational order. First the unclean milk in the bottle not cared for: then diph- theria: then measles, and then scarlet fever; though perhaps the after effects of scarlet fever are so much more serious than those of measles that it should be most feared, although fewer deaths result.
 But upon this mathmetical basis for fear the mother should certainly dread whooping cough, of which there were S53 cases in 1907 and Al deaths and in 1908. 90 deaths in 462 reported cases.
 Mothers will please not that the death rate from whooping cough was higher than the death rate from diph- theria. measles or scarlet fever, but it should be remembered that whooping cough is regarded by many people as SO entirely harmless that all cases are perhaps not reported.
 Typhoid fever has decreased when compared with the rate of 20 years ago, but within the last six or seven years it has not shown much change. This will be the case until the purity of the water used by the people is much improved. In 1907 there were there were 1,194 cases, with 191 deaths. TIT ~