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the more expensive foods now used by our poorer neighbours.
We acknowledge freely that this new knowledge of dietetics
has been derived partly from recent circulars of the Ministry
of Health and particulars from the researches on the subject
carried on at the Maternity and Child Welfare Department at
Hounslow.
The milk supplied to the mothers and children attending
your Clinics is a real boon. No less than 16,638 pints of the
best milk were supplied during the past year to those who
were found on investigation to be in receipt of an income
within your economic scale. Even with the School supply
I still think that children do not receive a sufficient daily
quantity of milk. We have no doubt now that milk efficiently
pasteurised is even safer and better than the graded
milks for all classes.
I am hoping that none of the institutions to which ou.
children are sent provide margarine instead of butter, or any
milk that has not been efficiently pasteurised.
ON DYING PREMATURELY.
In the returns of deaths received at this office every
week it is noticed how often men (especially) fail to reach
their fifth and sixth decade, instead of the seventh or eighth
in sound health.
This failure often arises, not so much from wilful carelessness
and neglect, as from complete ignorance of their
physical state. They drift on with many unsuspected
disabilities. If they were wiser, in spite of apparent fair
health, they would consult their doctor at 40, 45 and 50, have
their weight taken, their heart and blood tension tested, their
urine examined—such symptoms as dyspepsia, constipation,
uric acid troubles, insomnia, etc., corrected before they
become chronic.
There is no doubt that the majority of middle aged men,
almost unconsciously, eat and drink more than is required,
and take far too little exercise. The man who knows that his
parents and grandparents died in middle age can, and should,
reverse the hereditary tendency by a very careful regime—
in fact take as much care of his own health as he does of the
other members of the family. There is no excuse for anyone
dying prematurely, except from accident, whose parents lived
to eighty or ninety.
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