Figure C 66. "The +infant mortality within the families+ dealt with +falls materially and evenly as the average birth intervals lengthen+. With an average birth interval of less than one year, one-third of the children die in the first year, but only 7 per cent. where the average birth interval was over three years; but here also the influence is strongly modified by the mode of feeding. With the non-suckling families the mortality is almost 25 per cent., even with a birth interval of more than two years. On the other hand, when the duration of suckling is sufficient, short birth intervals almost disappear (see Table 2), and with an average birth interval of 1-1/4 to 2 years and a suckling duration of at least half a year the mortality remains on an extremely small scale."
Groth and Hahn have exhibited two large tables C 67 and C 68 and a similar one C 69, the results of their important investigations about +breast-feeding and mortality in the administrative districts of Bavaria+. Groth shows in Table C 70 "+mortality of sucklings in Bavaria+," and in Table C 71 "+breast-feeding and cancer+." In Tables C 72 and C 73 the Groth and Hahn statistics are treated by Dr. A. Bluhm from the point of view of the +influence of the habit of breast-feeding on the frequency of births+. In connection with Figure C 73 she remarks: "This diagram shows the number of bottle-fed babies in the various Bavarian districts counted at the time of vaccination. To give as correct a picture as possible of the probable influence which the habit of breast-feeding has on the birth-rate (annual number of births per 1,000 of the whole population) there are represented on this figure by green and yellow columns the average birth-rate for the five years, 1875 to 1879, because in that period a record birth-rate was established, so that it may be assumed that there was then no intentional restriction of births. We see within the four 'old Bavarian' districts, where on the average 64.1% of the babies were not breast-fed at all, the number of births is about 4 per 1,000 of the population higher than in the Palatinate and the three 'Frankish' districts, which together only show 18% of non-breast-fed children."