A STATISTICAL COMPARISON OF BREAST-FED AND BOTTLE-FED BABIES DURING THE FIRST YEAR

Abstract

Many pediatricians must have been impressed by the contrast between the satisfactory progress made by many of the bottle-fed infants under their care and the dismal results of artificial feeding noted by so many observers in the past. The elaborate study by Woodbury¹may be taken as a representative example, and probably the best one, of the researches that have revealed alarming hazards of bottle feeding, and that form the basis of our teaching to medical students, mothers and the public generally, that breast feeding under practically all conditions and continued for the most protracted period possible is preferable to bottle feeding. We teach that breast-fed babies are healthier, more resistant to infection and stronger, have firmer flesh, and are less subject to various nutritional disturbances. These claims have been made so often and so long that one is tempted to go back to the evidence on which they