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60
1911]
It is the knowledge of such facts as these that makes Medical Officers of
Health anxious to give advice to women as to how they should feed themselves,
and to bring the poorest women into touch with those charitable organisations
which are ready to assist them in procuring suitable nourishment, so that they
may give abundant and good breast milk to their infants. This is one
direction in which an effort should be made to prevent the waste of infant life
which is continuously going on—a waste, unfortunately, which too many persons
deliberately ignore. So patent is this fact that Mr. William Schooling, so well
known as an Actuary, and who is a great authority on life insurance, in an
article published in the Daily Telegraph on April 27th of this year, felt constrained
to write:—
"We are appalled by the sinking of the Titanic,, or by a volcanic eruption
"that devastates a neighbourhood and destroys many lives, but we lack the
imagination to see that consumption and infantile mortality are causing
"annually a far greater loss of life than many Titanic disasters in quick
"succession. We are rightly insisting upon the adoption of all possible
"measures for preventing the repetition of any such loss of life as followed
"from the sinking of the Titanic. We, for the most part, do not stir a little
"finger for the adoption of preventive measures, which are known to be
"practicable, for the diminution of disease and the prevention of premature
"death.
"I am not in the least urging that sympathy with the sufferers from the
"Titanic disaster is anything but good, and a fine tribute to the character of
"the nation. But it may be urged that there are invisible forces at work,
"submerged icebergs in the social sea, causing an appalling moitality, and a
"shudder-causing amount of suffering among the community which can be and
"should be prevented. There is talk that the absence of field glasses may have
"prevented the sighting of the iceberg which sent the Titanic to the bottom.
"Is it not the case that people as a whole are declining to use the mental
"glasses which are available, and which would show them how to avoid »/
" they would the causes of disease that are doing such damage to the life
" of the nation?"
These facts, so tersely put, have for many years been incessantly placed
by the Medical Officer of Health before his Council and his Public Health
Committee, but hitherto without success in obtaining the machinery to
enable him to deal with this great loss of life among our infants, as well as
the prevention of the irreparable damage to so many of those who survive.