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Cow's milk is the best substitute for human milk
generally available, but cow's milk is particularly subject
to contamination by disease-producing germs, especially
the germ of summer diarrhoea. Such contamination may
take place:—
1. Before the milk reaches the consumer.
2. In the home of the consumer.
But cow's milk, even when free from germs and free
also from chemical preservatives, is not a suitable food for
a young baby without preliminary treatment. Cow's milk
is the natural food of the calf —an animal with four
stomachs, and it is with difficulty digested in the single
stomach of the human infant.
From these considerations it appeared that the infantile
deaths due to improper feeding could, to a very great extent,
be prevented if an adequate supply of cow's milk, rendered
more digestible by special treatment, free from germs and
chemicals, and with the proper quantities for each meal
unmistakably indicated, could be brought within the reach of
the poor in such a form as to reduce the possibility of
contamination within the home to a minimum.
The method initiated by Dr. Leon Dufour at the Goutte
de Lait, Fecamp, seemed to fulfil these conditions. It consists
of supplying humanised sterilised milk in stoppered bottles,
each bottle containing sufficient food for one meal and no more.
The process of humanisation adapts the milk to the
infant's digestive organs, the sterilisation kills the germs, and
as the bottle is not opened—or should not be opened—from
the time it enters the steriliser until the baby is ready to take
his meal from it direct (no feeding-bottle should be used),
home contamination, unless it is wilful or due to extreme
carelessness, is prevented. This method was adopted by the
St. Helens Corporation in 1899, and by Liverpool and Ashtonunder-Lyne
in the following year.
Upon the recommendation of the Health Committee, the
Borough Council decided, on the 10th July, 1901, to adopt
this method, and voted a sum of to start the scheme.