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summer months, 12 cases of infantile diarrhoea were brought to the notice
of the Lady Sanitary Inspector, and numerous visits were paid to the
homes to give advice as to the proper carrying out of medical instructions
and nursing. All the cases made a satisfactory recovery.
Dinners for ChelseaNursing Mothers.—This Society provides dinners for
mothers for three months before the baby is born, and for nine months after
if the child is being breast-fed. A charge of Id. is made for each dinner. The
dinners are given at three centres in the Borough, each centre having a
Lady Superintendent and a staff of Visitors. During the year 1913, 205
mothers were on the books of the Society, and 11,841 dinners in all were
provided. There can be no donbt that the encouragement given by this
system of cheap meals to the breast-feeding of infants is of great advantage
to the health of both mothers and infants ; without it, many of the
poorest mothers would be unable to suckle their babies.
Chelsea Health Society.—The Society reports that during 1913, the
average attendance of mothers with babies at the weekly " infant consultations
" was 20. During the last quarter of the year a " medical
inspection centre," under the direction of Dr. Reginald Jewesbury,
physician to out-patients at the Victoria Hospital, was inaugurated, at
which children up to the age of five years are seen and examined weekly,
and advice is given as to health conditions and the prevention of any
latent defects that may be detected on examination. The average
attendance at these medical inspections was 26.
The total number of cases referred to the Society in 1913 was 937,
of which number 865 were infants. The deaths of infants under one year
of age amounted to 32, corresponding to an infantile mortality rate of 37,
as compared with 92 for the entire borough. Prom St. George's Hospital
77 maternity cases were referred to the Society, and 649 visits were paid
in connection with these cases. Five of the infants were still-born, two
died under the age of three months, and one at twelve months.
The Society has worked in co-operation with the Public Health
Department and with the various charitable, relief,and district visiting
organisations of the Borough, and has undoubtedly been the means of
doing an immense amount of good work in the prevention of disease and
suffering, and in enabling the poor to make the best use of their own
means and of existing organisations for improving their own and their
children's health. The work of the Society should tend not only to the
reduction of infantile mortality, but to the rearing of children of better
physique and constitutional stamina than is possible where the poorest
class of mothers are left to their own unaided guidance.