ication to the authorities of
a child's birth, and the institution of Health Visitors to ascertain
what is being done for the infant's well-being, and to aid the mother
with advice, have certainly been a large factor in the recent reduction
in the infantile death-rate in England.[3]

The care of the infant has indeed now become a new applied science, the
science of puericulture. Professor Budin of Paris may fairly be regarded
as the founder of puericulture by the establishment in Paris, in 1892,
of Infant Consultations, to which mothers were encouraged to bring their
babies to be weighed and examined, any necessary advice being given
regarding the care of the baby. The mothers are persuaded to suckle
their infants if possible, and if their own health permits. For the
cases in which suckling is undesirable or impossible, Budin established
Milk Depots, where pure milk is supplied at a low price or freely.
Infant Consultations and Milk Depots are now becoming common everywhere.
A little later than Budin, another distinguished French physician,
Pinard, carried puericulture a step further back, but a very important
step, by initiating a movement for the care of the pregnant woman.
Pinard and his pupils have shown by a number of detailed investigations
that the children born to working mothers who rest during the last three
months of pregnancy, are to a marked extent larger and finer than the
children of those mothers who enjoy no such period of rest, even though
the mothers themselves may be equally robust and healthy in both cases.
Moreover, it is found that premature birth, one of the commonest
accidents of modern life, tends to be prevented by such rest. The
children of mothers who rest enjoy on the average three weeks longer
development in the womb than the children of the mothers who do not
rest, and this prolonged ante-natal development cannot fail to be a
benefit for the whole of the child's subsequent life. The movement
started by Pinard, though strictly a continuation of the great movement
for the improvement of the conditions of life, takes us as far back as
we are able to go on these lines, and has in it the promise of an
immense benefit to human efficiency.

In connection with the movement of puericulture initiated by Budin and
Pinard must be mentioned the institution of Schools for Mothers, for it
is closely associated with the aims of puericulture. The School for
Mothers arose in Belgium, a little later than t