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2. As the bottle only requires heating a little, before use, a
busy and careful mother is saved much time and anxiety
in the preparation of her infants' food.
3. A careless mother has her opportunities for doing her infant
harm in this way, reduced to a minimum.
The objections may be mentioned as follows:—
1. Their tendency to encourage the idea amongst the unthinking,
that a substitute for mother's milk is provided, and that
breast feeding is no longer of prime importance.
2. The weight of responsibility assumed by the local authority
necessitating an elaborate and therefore expensive
machinery for carrying it out.
3. The milk itself is rather an expensive item to a poor family,
costing as it does for one infant, from 1s. 6d. to 2s. per
week. For this reason it might be least available for
many of those who were in most need of it.
To these objections should, I think, be added the effect which the
provision of a milk supply made germ free by sterilization, might
have in postponing the time when the public will demand a supply
naturally pure from the source.
On the whole, I am of opinion, that most benefit is to be hoped
for, in the milk difficulty, as in others pertaining to this subject,
from an enlightened system of instruction in those principles that I
have referred to; for, after all, the situation is in the hands of the
the mother, and intelligent care and skill on her part will guard the
infant against the dangers arising from this source, as it will, indeed,
from most of the other causes of diarrhcea.