What, could she, as her own existence dear, Nine tedious months her tender burthen bear, Yet when at length it smil'd upon the day, To hireling hands its helpless frame convey.

"Men and women have always longed for both fertility and sterility, each at its appointed time and in its chosen circumstances." Norman E. Himes, 1936. SUMMARY A positive correlation between fertility and infant mortality is generally accepted under certain conditions. The investigation of population change in two parishes in south Oxfordshire during the Stuart period was carried out as part of a Ph.D. thesis. It became apparent that there was a clear link between the death of an infant and the reduction of the subsequent intergenesic interval. It also seemed clear that lactation had an important part to play in fertility and infant mortality.The infant feeding habits of the seventeenth century are difficult to establish. The diaries of many women do not include this evidence. A pattern was established that clearly indicated aristocratic and gentlewomen did not usually breast feed, whilst yeomen and husbandmen's wives did, when they could.The most recent medical evidence regarding the mechanisms of puerperal lactation was sought on both sides of the Atlantic, and has indicated the effectiveness of breast feeding in the control of fertility. Although this cannot have been understood in seventeenth-century England, it appears to have been a means of limiting the size of peasant families. Although the evidence for breast feeding is lacking, the very low infant mortality rate in the two parishes, approximately 113 per thousand live births, indicated that these compared favourably with certain aristocratic women during the seventeenth century who were placing their infants with wet nurses or weaning early on to meal pap.A great deal more evidence is needed to establish that infant feeding methods may be responsible for massive population change leading to industrialization, but it is not outside the realm of possibility. It is of course very important in the developing nations of today.

Context: Evaluating community-based health promotion programs is an essential aspect of public health programming to ensure evidence-based practices, justify limited resource allocation, and share knowledge about promising strategies. Community microgrant schemes represent a viable strategy to strengthen local health promotion, yet limited guidance exists surrounding the evaluation of such programs.Objective: This research aimed to map methods used in evaluating community microgrants programs for health promotion. Design: A scoping review in accordance with Joanna Briggs Institute methodology. Eligibility Criteria: Peer-reviewed academic and gray literature, which evaluated processes and/or outcomes of nonprescriptive community-based microgrant program for health promotion in high-income countries. Study Selection: Literature was identified through MEDLINE, Scopus, CINAHL, and EMBASE databases, Google and DuckDuckGo browsers, and hand-searching key reference lists. Articles were screened by title, abstract, and then full-text. Main Outcome Measure(s): Review findings were mapped according to included sources' evaluation methodologies. Results: Eighteen academic publications describing 14 microgrant programs met the inclusion criteria. These spanned the years 1996 to 2020 and were located across 5 countries. Evaluation methods were very similar in terms of design (mixedmethods case studies) and focus (both processes and outcomes) and yet varied widely with regard to measurements and data collection. Few made explicit the use of an evaluation framework, chose to involve stakeholders in the evaluation process, or discussed application and dissemination of evaluation findings. Discussion: Community-based microgrant programs for health promotion are a promising model in diverse settings and with various health priorities and targets, yet robust evaluations of their implementation and effectiveness are lacking. The review highlights the need to further develop and support evaluation practices in public health, even in small-scale programs with limited budgets.

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