Hints from the Health Department. Leaflet from the archive of the Society of Medical Officers of Health. Credit: Wellcome Collection, London
[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for Willesden]
This page requires JavaScript
Willesden Urban District Council.
PUBLIC HEALTH DEPARTMENT.
Artificial Feeding of Infants
AND
Summer Diarrhoea.
THE DANGER OF INFANTILE OR SUMMER DIARRHCEA.
In the hot summer months of every year a disease breaks out among
the babies, especially of the working classes, which kills an incredible
number of them. It is called diarrhoea, and during hot dry summers it is
so dangerous to infants under one year of age that it is safer to be a
soldier on a field of battle than to be a baby of tender months and run the
gauntlet of this terrible infantile pestilence. None of the epidemics of
later years, however deadly they may appear, are to be compared in deadliness
to the summer diarrhoea of infants, and if you can guard your baby
from this disease you will have shielded it from the greatest particular
danger of its life.