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29
BRIEF HISTORY OF SCHOOLS FOR MOTHERS.
The steady fall in the birth-rate of civilised countries, and especially of
France, first drew attention to the importance of making efforts to diminish
the infantile mortality. These commenced also in France and were initiated by
obstetric physicians in connection with maternity hospitals—the best organised
institutions being the "Consultations de Nourrissons," which started at the
Maternity Hospital at Nancy in 1890, followed by the late Professor Budin in
the Paris Hospitals, commencing at La Charite in 1892, and these and other
similar institutions dealt at first with mothers who had been patients in the
Hospitals. In 1892 also Dr. Yariot established in Paris a " Gouttes de Lait "
in connection with a Dispensary where mothers not attending hospitals could
bring their infants for advice, and where sick infants were treated and supplied
with milk of proper quality and quantity for hand-feeding.
Faulty hand-feeding being regarded as the main cause of infantile mortality,
especially in summer time, the idea of supplying a better artificial food for
sucklings was eagerly assumed to be a speedy and direct method of checking
the death-rate of infants. Accordingly, Infants' Milk Depots (Gouttes de Lait)
were started in Great Britain in various places between 1899 and 1904. These
institutions diminished the mortality of the hand-fed infants to whom their
prepared milk was distributed, but had little or no effect upon infantile
mortality generally, until infant consultations and home visiting were adopted
by them with a view to diminishing the amount of hand-feeding which their
first efforts tended to increase by the subsidisation of this mode of feeding. To
quote Dr. J. J. Buchan, M.O.H. of St. Helens, where the first Milk Depot in
Great Britain was established:—" The sphere of such a depot is strictly limited ;
it must be used as part of a general plan, the success of which will be greatly
to diminish the number of infants to be supplied with depot milk. At St.
Helens during the ten years the depot has been in use, the number of hand-fed
infants has fallen from 20 to 5 per cent. of the total births. There are at
present in the Borough only 150 infants being hand-fed, about half of them
are nourished on depot milk. Infant milk depots, like fever hospitals, must
work for their own extinction."
In his Annual Report for 1910 Dr. Buchan says: " the percentage of infants
who are breast-fed has increased, and on the present method of reckoning
amounted to 98 in 1910. An inquiry into 2,170 cases showed that only 6.6
per cent, of the infants originally reckoned as breast-fed at birth were weaned
before they were six months old."
When the Infant Milk Depots were coming upon the scene careful enquiries
were made in St. Pancras into the effect of the usual leaflets distributed by
Medical Officers of Health in which breast-feeding was briefly referred to as
desirable, and lengthy details were given of the preparation of food for handfeeding,
and it was found that mothers were weaning their babies prematurely
in order to carry out the detailed instructions of the Medical Officer of Health
as to hand-feeding. We promptly destroyed our leaflets and set to work to
analyse anew the causes of infant mortality during the previous half century
and these were the conclusions arrived at:—