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Infants Milk Depot.
The Depot is the outcome of an enquiry by a sub-committee
of the Health Committee, which was appointed in the spring
of 1901 to enquire into the conditions giving rise to the high
rate of infantile mortality in Battersea, and to recommend
measures for its reduction. The sub-committee enquired fully
into the subject, and the conclusion to which they came may
be stated as follows:—
A very large proportion of the infantile mortality is
due directly or indirectly to improper feeding.
This is not a matter for surprise, having regard to
the enormous importance of the food question to the
infant. The well-being of every animal depends directly
on its ability to secure an adequate amount of food suited
to the capacity of its digestive organs; and especially is
this the case with the human infant, who at five or six
months old should weigh twice its weight at birth.
Nature has provided a supply of food of inimitable
excellence from the breast of the mother, but owing to
the deplorable spread of the practice of artificial feeding,
this food is, in a large number of cases, not available.
The substitution of a satisfactory artificial food for
the natural food which has been elaborated during ages
of evolution is not an easy task for the wisest in the
present state of human knowledge, and, as a matter of
fact, the food and methods of feeding adopted in many
cases are such as to make it a matter for surprise that
the number of infantile deaths is not greater than is
actually the case. It should be remembered, however,
that many of the survivors are left with constitutions
more or less seriously weakened and impaired to continue
the struggle for existence. Not infrequently such articles
as boiled eggs, potatoes, carrots, fruit, cheese, tea, coffee,
and even beer and spirits are given to young babies, and
a large proportion of children are fed on condensed milks
and proprietary foods which are deficient in nutritive
properties, especially fat. Rickets and other diseases of
malnutrition are common amongst children so fed.