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15
appearance, guideand help them; and we must educate the mothers of the
future while they are under our control at school, and while their mindsare
plastic and receptive. Failing breast-feeding, the only substitute
is fresh cow's milk treated so as to resemble human milk as much as
possible, and stored and administered under conditions of scrupulous
cleanliness. For the neglect of these simple precautions, the infants of
these islands are paying an annual toll of many thousands of deaths.
The other remedies suggested and adopted to reduce this wastage of
human life are numerous and manifold. Many are designed rather as
palliatives of symptoms than as radical cures. Subsidiary measures to
be discarded when better methods become practicable are the municipal
milk depots and creches. These have doubtless a great educative value,
and the provision of the latter in most urban districts is becoming
increasingly necessary now that education authorities are beginning to
recognise that evils of a public health nature and the cost entailed
outweigh the educational benefits to be derived from admitting babies
to school under the age of five.
The distribution of clean milk from a municipal depot, in clean
bottles, which only hold sufficient for the child's meal and from
which the child is directly fed, is a useful measure under existing circumstances,
because the milk purchased at the door is often dirty
and the risks of home contamination are so great; but the measure is
essentially a palliative one and must be regarded as only provisional.
The radical cure is to be found in clean cows, clean cowsheds, cleanly
milking and transit, and clean storage in the house. A pure milk
supply is at the present day one of the greatest sanitary needs of the
country, and if we can teach the masses the great importance of keeping
the milk clean after it arrives in the homes many hundreds of infant
lives will be saved each year.
During the year, with the consent of the Public Health Committee,
Miss Wilkinson voluntarily undertook the visitation of the poorer
homes in the Borough in which a death of a child under twelve
months of age had occurred during the preceding year. The number
of such deaths is not sufficiently great to warrant one in drawing out
a statistical statement, but the information which she collected and