Hints from the Health Department. Leaflet from the archive of the Society of Medical Officers of Health. Credit: Wellcome Collection, London
[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for Hornsey, Borough of]
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(2) It would abolish rickets and the deformities of the chest and
limbs resulting from this food-deficiency disease.
(3) It would help materially in the formation of sound teeth
resistent to decay.
(4) It would be an important factor in the control and eradication
of tuberculosis.
(5) It would increase the resistance of the community to infection
of various kinds and reduce complications and sequel® of
infectious diseases.
(6) External eye diseases—blepharitis—and septic conditions of
the skin would be diminished in incidence and more readily
cured.
(7) It would be a big factor in abolishing rheumatic infection,
with its serious train of heart complications and sequelae.
(8) By assisting in full skeletal development in girls it would tend
to reduce difficult labour and by increasing the natural resistance
to infection it would prevent puerperal fever. In both of
these ways it would reduce maternal mortality and morbidity.
(9) Recent observations already quoted in this report suggest that
myopia is a condition which, in its progress, is sensitive to the
state of the nutrition of the myope.
(10) Recent work on the relation of adenoids and enlarged tonsils
to rickets suggests that nutrition is an important factor in
enlargement of tonsils and adenoids.
(11) Mens sana in corpore sano—a well-nourished body is essential
to mental health.
In these and possibly in other ways a successful nutrition campaign
would be in the strictest and best sense "preventive
medicine," and would contribute materially to an improvement
of the public health.
A splendidly successful beginning has been made by the
adoption of the National Milk Publicity Council's scheme for the
distribution of one-third of a pint of pasteurised milk daily to
each child who pays one penny for it. This is not so much a
scheme for the feeding of school children or the provision of
school meals as a lesson in the hygiene of food and dietetics. The
daily bottle of milk consumed by over 2,600 children in the
elementary schools teaches—(1) That cows' milk is a good food