The exceptionally high mortality in the first year of life has long stimulated research into its causes, the level of the infant mortality rate having been regarded as an indicator of the social and economic well-being of a nation. The dramatic decline in mortality experienced by western countries in the last century has been most pronounced for infancy, childhood, and adolescence. Nevertheless, infant mortality still poses a serious problem in Austria; while in some European countries the infant mor tality rate has been reduced to 1 -5 to 2 per cent., a value not so long ago being rejected by many experts as impossible, Austria compares relatively un favourably with these countries, the rate for 1961 (preliminary result) still amounting to as much as 3-3 per cent. While in some countries the fight against infant mortality is being replaced by an active promotion of child health, Austria is but on the threshold of this new era. Whereas in other countries infant mortality data are closely studied, and full use is made of statistics as an objective means for revealing problems, as an aid in finding solutions to them, and in testing the efficiency of measures introduced to overcome them, there exists in Austria a certain lack of figure-mindedness, possibly because of the many disturbances this country has been submitted to, which interrupted a tradition so hopefully begun about 1900 in connexion with such names as those of Teleky, Rosenberg, and Peller. In this study some aspects of infant mortality in