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115
INFANTS' MILK DEPÔT.
During the year I was instructed by the Council to draw up a
report supplementary to my report on The Milk Supply of Finsbury
(published 1903), as to the Infants' Milk Depôt at Battersea, and on
infant milk supply generally. That report will be found in the
Minutes of the Council, year ending March, 1905, pp. 20-24.
As I have pointed out elsewhere, there is a two-fold problem in
respect of the milk supply. First, the supply of a naturally pure
whole milk for all consumers ; secondly, the supply of a modified
and, if necessary, sterilised milk for infants. The first question is
dealt with in The Milk Supply of Finsbury (1903), and need not be
further considered here. The second question is one of supplying
a modified milk as a substitute food for infants containing the
essential constituents of breast milk, viz., fat, albuminoids and milk
sugar, combined in such proportions as will suit the requirements
of each individual infant, and free from injurious and other bacteria
and their toxins.
Now infantile mortality has a definite relationship to (a) the
feeding of infants, (b) personal care of infants by parents, (c) housing
accommodation, and (d) certain meteorological conditions affecting
temperature and the dissemination of dust. Other elements enter
into the problem, but, so far as municipal action is concerned, those
are the four main elements. If we can succeed in raising the
quality, as regards purity, of the milk on which infants are
fed, we shall at the same time educate and improve the sense
of duty towards their infants on the part of parents. The
mischief lies in polluted milk. The sources of the pollution are
not only in unsatisfactory methods of milking, and in storing and
conveying the milk supplied, but also in dirty domestic conditions,
and particularly in carelessness in the use of feeding bottles.
Successfully to attack, by municipal administration, all the sources
of pollution is at present impossible, but the ideal of public health
administration in respect of the artificial feeding of infants is
a pure milk supply which needs no sterilisation ; and towards that
end all our efforts should be directed. Modification of such
cow's milk for infant use will still be necessary. Meanwhile