compulsory notification of births within forty-eight hours; (2) the appointment of lady assistant medical officers of help to visit the home, inquire, advise, and assist; (3) the organized aid of voluntary lady workers in subordination to the municipal part of the scheme; (4) appeal to the medical officer of help when the baby, not being under medical care, fails to thrive.  The infantile mortality of Huddersfield has been very greatly reduced by this scheme.[16]

The Huddersfield scheme may be said to be the origin of the English Notification of Births Act, which came into operation in 1908.  This Act represents, in England, the national inauguration of a scheme for the betterment of the race, the ultimate results of which it is impossible to foresee.  When this Act comes into universal action every baby of the land will be entitled—­legally and not by individual caprice or philanthropic condescension—­to medical attention from the day of birth, and every mother will have at hand the counsel of an educated woman in touch with the municipal authorities.  There could be no greater triumph for medical science, for national efficiency, and the cause of humanity generally.  Even on the lower financial plane, it is easy to see that an enormous saving of public and private money will thus be effected.  The Act is adoptive, and not compulsory.  This was a wise precaution, for an Act of this kind cannot be effectual unless it is carried out thoroughly by the community adopting it, and it will not be adopted until a community has clearly realized its advantages and the methods of attaining them.

An important adjunct of this organization is the School for Mothers.  Such schools, which are now beginning to spring up everywhere, may be said to have their origins in the Consultations de Nourrissons (with their offshoot the Goutte de Lait), established by Professor Budin in 1892, which have spread all over France and been widely influential for good.  At the Consultations infants are examined and weighed weekly, and the mothers advised and encouraged to suckle their children.  The Gouttes are practically milk dispensaries where infants for whom breast-feeding is impossible are fed with milk under medical supervision.  Schools for Mothers represent an enlargement of the same scheme, covering a variety of subjects which it is necessary for a mother to know.  Some of the first of these schools were established at Bonn, at the Bavarian town of Weissenberg, and in Ghent.  At some of the Schools for Mothers, and notably at Ghent (described by Mrs. Bertrand Russell in the Nineteenth Century, 1906), the important step has been taken of giving training to young girls from fourteen to eighteen; they receive instruction in infant anatomy and physiology, in the preparation of sterilized milk, in weighing children, in taking temperatures and making charts, in managing creches, and after two years are able