View report page

41
report of the Female Sanitary Inspector concerning her visits to
certain cases of Infantile Diarrhoea, in which she stated that: —
"In this disease it is essential that the child should not be
"given food of any description for at least twenty-four hours,
"and to instil this into the minds of mothers at times seems
"almost impossible. One instance will show the difficulty.
"After having spent some considerable time one day in carefully
"explaining to a mother how to make albumen and rice-water,
"also leaving a leaflet for her general guidance, on the day
"following I happened to be in the street, and accordingly
"called in to see if the child had improved, when I was horrified
"to find it sucking a piece of boiled pork. Another time, when
"enquiring into a case of sickness, I found a child three years of
"age, who had only been weaned a few weeks, had two days
"previous to the onset of Diarrhoea been given some strawberries,
"gooseberries, a green apple and hokey-pokey. The child,
"becoming ill, was simply given a hard-boiled egg to attempt
"to stop the diarrhoea. In a large number of instances I have
"heard similar things. Another factor in the causation of this
"sickness is probably due to the milk food of the child. Assum"ing
that the milk is clean at the source of supply, the method
"of delivery and storage leaves much to be desired. The milk,
"after being carried around the streets for an hour or two, is
"then very frequently, in the poorer neighbourhoods, put into
"an uncovered can or jug (left purposely uncovered for the
"convenience of the milkman) and deposited on the door-step,
"thus allowing dust and germs from the roads to freely enter
"and contaminate the milk. In many instances mothers have
"expressed surprise when hearing that Diarrhoea was infectious.
"In one house there was a series of three cases and two of the
"children died."
The lowest rates of Infantile Mortality amongst the Metropolitan
Boroughs were 73 per 1,000 births in Hampstead, 78 in
Lewisham, 79 in Woolwich, 82 in Stoke Newington, 88 in Wandsworth,
and 90 in Chelsea, whilst the highest were 118 in Bethnal
Green, 132 in Bermondsey, 138 in Finsbury, and 155 in Shoreditch.