(for an average period of nine or ten months), while for the group of 56 who stood lowest in athletic power the percentage of breast-fed fell to 57 (for an average of only three months).
The advantages for an infant of being suckled by its mother are greater than can be accounted for by the mere fact of being suckled rather than hand-fed.

This has been shown by Vitrey (_De la Mortalite Infantile_, These de Lyon, 1907), who found from the statistics of the Hotel-Dieu at Lyons, that infants suckled by their mothers have a mortality of only 12 per cent., but if suckled by strangers, the mortality rises to 33 per cent.

It may be added that, while suckling is essential to the complete well-being of the child, it is highly desirable for the sake of the mother's health also.

(Some important statistics are summarized in a paper on "Infantile Mortality" in _British Medical Journal_, Nov.

2, 1907), while the various aspects of suckling have been thoroughly discussed by Bollinger, "Ueber Saeuglings-Sterblichkeit und die Erbliche functionelle Atrophie der menschlichen Milchdruese" (_Correspondenzblatt Deutschen Gesellschaft Anthropologie_, Oct., 1899).
It appears that in Sweden, in the middle of the eighteenth century, it was a punishable offense for a woman to give her baby the bottle when she was able to suckle it.