View report page

93
The milk is first cleansed of dirt by an adaptation of an
Alpha-Laval separator. It is then bottled into 7-oz. bottles
by an ingenious automatic arrangement, allowing a large
number of bottles to be filled simultaneously : the bottles
are stoppered, put into galvanized iron baskets, each containing
nine bottles, and conveyed to the steriliser, an
apparatus which can sterilise 860 bottles in these baskets at
one charge.
After remaining twenty minutes at a temperature just
under boiling water, the steam is replaced by a spray of cold
water, the steriliser is opened, and the trolleys bearing the
trays of bottles run into a refrigerator, from whence, after
forty minutes, they are conveyed to the sale room.
The prices are as follows:—
Nine 7-oz. bottles, one part with two parts water, suitable
for infants under 3 months old 2d.
Nine 7-oz. bottles, one part milk and one part water,
suitable for infants from 3 months to 6 months
old 2½d.
Nine 7-oz. bottles, two parts with one part water, for
infants from 6 to 8 months old 3d.
Several other corporate bodies outside the Metropolis
are now provided with similar depots, notably Liverpool;
the Liverpool depot, instead of selling milk diluted with
water according to the age of the infant, aims at imitating
human milk by suitable additions of water, cream, sugar,
and salt.
The system was initiated in 1901, so that Liverpool has
two years' experience of the system. The Medical Officer
of Health for Liverpool, in his last annual report, states :
"The fact stands out that of 4,453 infants coming very
promiscuously to the depot at varied ages and in conditions
of health below the average, the mortality was 78 per 1,000,
as against 100 for the whole city;"
In the more crowded parts of Marylebone the mortality
of hand-fed infants is excessive, and if there is a reasonable
prospect of reducing this mortality by following the
examples of Glasgow, of Liverpool, of Ashton-under-Lyne,