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35
Unhealthy environment of infants, due to overcrowded,
badly-lighted and badly-ventilated rooms;
Absence of food storage accommodation;
The inability of the poorer classes during temporary
lack of employment to purchase the necessary milk supplies;
The difficulty, particularly among the poorer classes of
obtaining pure and fresh milk;
The difficulty of preparing cows' milk in a form suitable
for infants;
The use of patent foods, which are largely advertised as
substitutes for milk;
The perverseness of parents who prefer to adhere to the
traditional methods adopted by their mothers and grandmothers
rather than listen, and much less act, upon advice offered to
them by skilled observers, which they are pleased to designate
"doctors' fads" or "new-fangled ideas."
The failure to recognise the danger of Diarrhoea in
infants, and to obtain immediate medical advice.
MILK SUPPLY.
Although great reforms have been carried out in regard
to sanitation, by improvements in housing and drainage, and in
securing a pure water supply for the community, the milk
supply, which is all-important, especially to that portion of the
population under two years of age, is still uncontrolled.
A pure milk supply is as essential as a pure water supply.
We have only to consider the number of epidemics of Typhoid
Fever, Diphtheria, and Scarlet Fever which have occurred in the
country from infected milk, to see the importance of this fact.