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8
It is a fact that during the great cotton famine the mortality of
children among the Lancashire cotton weavers and spinners was not
so high as usual. This was due to the fact that mothers being no
longer able to work at the cotton mills had more time to attend to
their children.
At the Aberdeen Congress of the Royal Institute of Public Health,
Dr. Templeman, Medical Officer of Health for Dundee, stated that
in Dundee, the registrar, at the time of registering the birth, gave
the parents leaflets about Infant Hygiene, and the knowledge was
spread in that way. He had found on visiting the houses of the
poorer people that they had read the leaflet carefully, and were
trying to act up to what it contained.
I called upon the Registrars of Births and Deaths for Bromley
and Poplar, Mr. Butler and Mr. Purdy, and these gentlemen stated
that they would be too pleased to distribute like leaflets if supplied
with them.
Acting upon the instructions of the Sanitary Committee, in order
to lessen infantile mortality, I prepared a leaflet upon "Hints regarding
the Management of Infants," so as to supply the Registrars
of Births and Deaths for Poplar and Bromley.
French law on food for babies : "It is not generally known that
in France it is a penal offence to give any form of solid food to
babies under a year old, unless it be prescribed in writing by a
properly qualified medical man. Nurses are also forbidden to use
for their charges any sort of feeding bottle having a rubber tube.
These and other equally stringent laws have recently been enacted
by the French Government; for, in despair of increasing the
birthrate of their country, they are now doing their utmost best
to save the lives of the comparatively small number of babies
born,"