Unhealthy Children in New York and Brooklyn

About This Item

Title: Unhealthy Children in New York and Brooklyn
Date: 22 May 22 1858
Creator(s): Walt Whitman
Whitman Archive ID: per.00817
Source: Brooklyn Daily Times, 22 May 22 1858: 2. Our transcription is based on a digital image of a microfilm scan of the original issue. Microfilm of original issue held at Pennsylvania State University Libraries. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the journalism, see our statement of editorial policy.
Editorial note: This piece is unsigned, as was the case for most of Whitman's journalism. However, this editorial is part of a series of texts that deal with a coherent theme that has been identified by the Whitman Archive journalism team as likely authored by Whitman. This decision is based on a combination of historical and (auto)biographical accounts, similarity to contemporary Whitman writings, a history of scholarly attribution, extant clippings retained by Whitman, computational stylometric analysis, and, in some cases, manuscript evidence in Whitman’s hand.
Contributors to digital file: Rachel Romero Kaylen Michaelis Brandi Faulkner Stefan Schöberlein Karie Cobb
Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "Unhealthy Children in New York and Brooklyn." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 16 July 2024. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
Source File: per.00817.xml (TEI)

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UNHEALTHY CHILDREN IN NEW YORK AND BROOKLYN.

On this subject, and speaking of "swill milk," the N.Y Times says:

"That the putrid diet of our children, more than either poverty or fetid air, are to blame, is probable from the fact that infantile diseases are unusually prevalent in all classes of New York society. Marasmus, hydrocephalus and cholera infantum are scarcely less common on the broad, well-aired avenues than in the rotten rows."

No—all those diseases, as far as children are concerned, are from hereditary tendencies. It only needs to be considered, for a moment, what a proportion of the parents, in great cities, bear in them, at marriage, and during married life, the germs of disease—some one thing, some another. How many out of the whole number are in a condition of sound health?

Then again—same source as above—

"Of the deaths in New York City last year, 14,948, more than half of the whole number, were of children under five years. It is a proportion of infant mortality that is scarcely paralleled in any other Christian city; but its causes are well known. The wretched poverty of the newly-arrived emigrant population, the damp, mouldy cellars in which they herd, the noisome vapors that constitute the air they breathe, account for much of it."

But, we repeat, the main cause is that their parentage is, in a physiological point of view, full of feebleness and iniquity. How can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit?

A child that inherits a vigorous constitution from its parents, can stand a great deal, without damage—including panegoric, close muffling of the face, candies, over-nursing, and even swill milk! Such a little "immortal" will bounce its way somehow through the world, and will almost seem to thrive on "poisons." We speak what we do know—for having been blessed with a large family of children, we have, under the foregoing theory, so far seen them progress, with a prospect of being a "credit to their country" in time to come.

So, you gentlemen who write upon sanitary reforms, "infant mortality," and so forth, go and preach a little more on a new tack. Make the parentage sound and strong, and these little troubles you make so much of, will exhale utterly away.