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63
[1911
midst; and have, therefore, failed to do their duty towards their progeny, whose
premature deaths, apart from those caused by the ill-feeding already mentioned,
are due in such innumerable instances to entirely preventable causes.
Last year the Local Government Board drew special attention to the
excessive mortality among children in the summer months in a circular addressed
to the Sanitary Authorities of England and Wales, suggesting " the lines along
which it was most important that action shou'd be taken, but they do not wish
it to be understood that this advice covers the entire ground, or that it does not
need to be supplemented by action directed towards the special needs of
individual districts." And what is the advice they tender at the very outset?
It is as follows :—Firstly, it is important that exact advice should be given as to
the feeding and management of children, and more generallv as to preventing the
exposure of their food to contamination from decomposing organic matter. The
distribution of clearly worded leaflets is useful in this connection. But even
more important are personal visits and the offer of practical
advice to the MOTHERS OF BABIES BORN WITHIN THE LAST
TWELVE MONTHS, and simple instructions are most likely to be followed if
given during a period of special danger." In that circular the Board write that
they "would be glad if the Medical Officer of Health, in his annual Report
dealing with the current year (1911), will set out the course of action adopted
in the district to prevent diarrhoea and child mortality generally in the special
circumstances of the present year."
What is to be his reply? Why, what can it be but that his Council have
ignored the advice, which he has again and again tendered to them, to appoint
Health Visitors to pay those " personal visits " and offer that " practical advice "
which the Board deem of the first importance.
•
Several leaflets have, however, been issued of an instructive and educational
character, which have been much more appreciated by educated women, even
in good positions in life, than by the very poor, whose want of learning does
not enable them to understand instructions, simple though they are, without
personal explanation. The following are the titles of the leaflets:—