Infanticide
the murder of an infant born alive; the killing of a young or newly-born child. The practice of destroying a portion of the offspring-in the majority of cases, the female children-among certain nations or tribes, appeared in the earliest times, and still lingers among some undeveloped races.
Lubbock thus accounts for female infanticide: "Girls ate, and did not hunt.
They weakened their mothers when young, and when grown up were a temptation to surrounding tribes"; but declines to accept the practice "as the true cause of exogamy." In Sparta it was used as one means of securing what Spencer calls the "survival of the fittest," and was defended by Plato and Aristotle.
The murder by high caste Rajpoots in India of their female children, once most extensive, arose from pride of caste.
Public opinion requiring the father to expend an extravagant sum on his daughter's marriage and dowry if she lived, he considered it more economic to have her put to death in infancy. To British remonstrance the answer was, "Pay our daughters' marriage portions, and they shall live." The government took a different method-it imposed on a father sanctioning the murder of his infant child an enormous fine, and the practice soon ceased.
Till lately some of the aboriginal tribes, especially the Khoonds, sacrificed children as votive offerings to the Earthgoddess. The Anglo-Indian government INFANTRY was for a long time unable to put down the practice, but the persistent kidnapping of native children from British-Indian soil having furnished a casus belli, war was declared against the Khoonds, who by the treaty of peace were required to give up female infanticide.
INFANTILE PARALYSIS. SEE POL- IOMYELITIS.