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106
Health Workers. These visits were followed by 698 revisits. The
advice given has been much appreciated and often much needed.
Miss Aldridge reports:—
"The greatest difficulty to contend with in trying to improve
the condition of these infants is poverty. The mothers are
frequently unable to provide the necessary food for themselves or
sufficient warm clothes for their infants while they are young,
and there is no doubt that many cases of unnecessary hand
feeding, and infantile deaths, are due to these circumstances.
"The following is the kind of case I come across in making
these visits:—
(1) "A baby aged 14 months was rickety. On inquiry I
found he had had no milk food for 5 months, the
reason being that during the previous August (when
the child was 9 months old) he had been ill with
diarrhoea and sickness, and the doctor had then ordered
him to be given no milk food, which advice the parents
considered should be carried out indefinitely.
(2) "A first baby, naturally fed for the first few weeks of
life, was at 10½ weeks put out to nurse during the day
because, although it was unnecessary, the mother
preferred working in a factory to minding her own
baby. The foster-mother (who lived outside the
Borough) fed the child on food made in the following
way: A teaspoonful of a patent food mixed with a
cupful of water, and a dash of milk added. The
child was thin and miserable-looking, and 3 lb. below
the normal weight. The foster-mother, however, was
quite satisfied with the child's progress, and refused
to feed her in any other way or to have her weighed
at the Town Hall. I was unable to make much
impression on the foster-mother, but succeeded in
persuading the mother to give up her work at the