Improved infant mortality?

So in reading many of the TL's here and looking at actual historical events, children of even nobles who presumably had access to better nutrition and care than the majority, still often die. That got me thinking. Are there practical things that could be done during the middle ages to reduce infant mortality and increase early childhood survival?

In this case, I'm not talking about what would or wouldn't be probable, but what would be possible. As in can be done if for some reason people would want to do it, not "they would never think of that for reason XYZ."
 
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My understanding is that there are indeed many simple things that could have been done at almost any time to reduce infant mortality, but since their development was a result of underlying theory (especially the germ theory of disease), nobody thought of them.

One big life-saver would be oral rehydration therapy. Diarrheal diseases such as cholera used to kill millions of infants under five years old every year, but this easy and inexpensive treatment has worked wonders. Basically boil water and add salt and easily-digested carbohydrates (salted rice water works fine). The big killer in these diseases is dehydration and loss of sodium, which the therapy can help counter.

On the topic of water, slow sand filtration is easy to set up and can vastly improve the safety (and taste) of drinking water.
 
Yes there were several things that could have been done. Many Infants die from dehydration, often from diseases that were grouped together as the 'Flux". There are many ways to keep infants hydrated that do not include IV's, but all of them require clean water.
So the biggest thing would be an increase in general hygiene
Maybe instead of germs devils in the water could cause the problems. maybe invent soap earlier
If people and there environment including the cloths and bedding were cleaner, there would be less mortality in general
 
Boiling drinking water, effective isotonic rehydration (Litrosol-style) and using distilled alcohol to clean out injuries would work wonders. The main problem even if we assume these things would happen is: they all require extra labour, which is not always going to be available in a peasant society. Especially not one with as lousy crop yields as medieval Europe had.

Better nutrition is a no-brainer, but hard to see for much the same reason.
 
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