London's Pulse: Medical Officer of Health reports 1848-1972
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Hints from the Health Department. Leaflet from the archive of the Society of Medical Officers of Health. Credit: Wellcome Collection, London
Lambeth 1925
[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for Lambeth Borough]
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cases were classified, at the time of being put upon the milk, as follows:—
| 1. Healthy, i.e., showing no sign of wasting or disease, though often below par constitutionally | 2,425 |
| 2. Weakly | 560 |
| 3. Wasting | 1,196 |
| 4. Diseased | 789 |
The diseases in classification No. 4 were as follows:—Sickness
and diarrhœa 137, bronchitis 91, indigestion 83, diarrhoea 93, sickness
35, rickets 34, lung disease 32, measles 24, whooping cough 23, pneumonia
25 hernia 18, consumptive bowels 13, convulsions 15, teething
13, gastritis 12, prematurity 12, congenital malformations 17, tuberculosis
12, and other diseases (not classified) 100.
The total amount of bottles of milk mixture distributed at the
Milk Depot during the 20 years has been 3,787,597 (infants under two
years of age 3,618,745; and others, e.g., invalids, nursing mothers,
expectant mothers, and children over two years of age, 168,852); whilst,
in addition, milk was also distributed, during the same period, to
Lambeth Guardians in 384,913 bottles.
Expressed as milk and cream, the above totals of bottles represent
an annual average of 13,126½ gallons of milk, and 625½ pints of cream
respectively.
The milk mixture is prepared under medical supervision, and for
the infants is humanised so as to be of the composition of mothers'
milk for the particular age-periods of the infants fed. This necessitates
the addition of cream or butter fat, and milk sugar, and the abstraction
of casein from the cows' milk, which is the basis of the Depôt mixture.
Further, all infants and children who are fed upon the milk in
connection with the Depôt are under medical supervision, in that they
are seen personally by the Medical Officer of Health, who attends at
the Depôt weekly for medical consultations as required, whilst the
homes of the parents are visited as a routine by the Council's Health
Visitor, who is attached to the Milk Depôt.
If the death-rate is calculated upon the infants and children
actually fed at the Milk Depôt, it is found to be very low in comparison
with that of infants and children not so fed, and a similar remark
applies in dealing with morbidity rates (or illness rates). There are,
however, statistically, difficulties inseparable from calculating rates upon
such a (comparatively) small population, but, even after allowing for