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Infant mortality was often considered fatalistically and was even understood as
the price of civilization and progress in XVIII and XIXth centuries. It was
necessary the need to overcome the fatalistic view of a direct link between
childhood and death due to “natural” fragility and weakness of the child.
Against this, society, the authorities and the doctors could, and above all
should, against the terrorific reality that towards the year 1900 the infant
mortality rate in many countries was over 300 per thousand children born alive. |
