A medical wiseacre has adventured the amazing dictum that _Every infant is born healthy_! He might, with equal truth, have said that every infant is born wealthy, or is born a Chinaman. Some infants are born alive, a great number are born dead. And between those born alive and healthy and the still-born, lie all the infinite gradations of constitutional condition between life and health, between disease and death. One child inherits from its parents a tuberculous tendency; another a neurotic, another a strain of alcoholism or other taint. One is born blind or a hopeless idiot; another with hare-lip or clubbed-foot; another with congenital heart-disease. One babe is born with a beautiful head; all its brain-faculties nobly developed and splendidly balanced. Another is born headless, or with a skull which, from crown to brows, is a rapid descent--showing lack of all the brain-powers involved in higher mentality; is born, in short, of criminal inherency. The degrees in which individuals strive against inherited tendencies differ greatly, as do the life-conditions wherein their will and moral power are tested--to make or to break them. Man is not, of course, _the creature_ merely of his heredity or of his environment. But he whose mother has equipped him with physical defects instead of with qualities, even though he fight against his disabilities, is obviously handicapped for the life-struggle. A great musician may charm fine music from a poor fiddle, but in no degree so fine as he will bring out of a more perfect instrument. VIII A phenomenon which has baffled vital statisticians is a curious relation between the Birth-rate and Infant-Mortality. A high birth-rate is found to be associated with a high rate of infant-mortality; while with a lower birth-rate, the death-rate among infants and children decreases. Long and careful observation has left me in no doubt as to the cause of this phenomenon. Which is, that under strain of disease, of industrial exhaustion or strenuous activities of any sort, but particularly as result of _the constitutional drain entailed by pregnancy_, mothers may so draw upon the vital powers of their children in order to recruit their own, as to occasion fatal illness in their families. The evil is so great in its effects, not only upon the health and constitution of the rising generation, but, as well, upon the physical and mental development thereof, that such maternal depletion is, I am assured, a cause of widespread disease among children; of infantile paralysis, degeneracy and mortality. It is reason enough, in all conscience, to call for the legalised prohibition of all mothers with young families from engaging in professional or industrial employment.