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prevention of summer diarrhoea is due not to any special measures
taken during the hot months of the year, but to the general preventive
work throughout the year. Continuous propaganda among
the mothers has instilled in them a lively interest in the prevention
of certain diseases, and one of the most marked results is the absence
of Diarrhoeal diseases in a hot and dry summer. We have travelled
a great distance since the days when we had to preach against the
long rubber tube bottle. If one wished to see such a bottle nowadays,
one would have to visit a museum, and yet in the beginning
of this century these bottles were in frequent and constant use.
It was no unusual sight to see one of these bottles placed on the
hob so that the milk could be kept warm whilst the baby fed.
We sometimes hear a claim made that the infantile mortality,
especially, from Diarrhoeal diseases, has been reduced by the efforts
of the dairymen to obtain a purer milk supply. Everyone admits
the improvement which has taken place in the character of the milk
supply, but the cause which operated in the banishment of the longtube
bottle also brought about, partly, at any rate, the improvement
in the milk supply.
Infant Welfare propaganda created an appreciation of cleanliness
in the mothers, and particularly cleanliness in food. A demand
for clean milk was one of the results, and the demand of
the mothers was more effective than the pleading of the sanitarians.
Since the dawn of bacteriology, Sanitarians had pointed out the
unsatisfactory condition of milk, but their plea for a clean supply
was met with the retort that clean milk would become prohibitive
in price. Opportunely, powdered milk was placed on the market,
and at once attained great popularity. Some astute members of
the milk trade saw the danger, and immediately proceeded to set
their house in order. To-day the majority of the milk distributors
recognise that a clean milk supply is an asset to them, but it is as
well to recognise the forces which have operated towards cleanliness.
A hot summer such as we have experienced in 1933, provides
us with an opportunity, to mark the progress which has been made
and to review the causes which have led to the great reduction in
our infantile mortality. Among the foremost of these, is the intelligent
interest which mothers nowadays take in the health of
the children. We no longer hear remarks about the abysmal ignorance
of young mothers, except in the rarest circumstances.
A health visitor gets better results when the young mother has
sole charge of her baby, than when she is trammelled by the advice
of the grandmother.