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HOW TO PREVENT IT.
(1) Nursing at the Breast versus Hand Feeding.
If your baby is nursed at the breast, it has an enormously
increased chance of escaping this disease. The death rate among
infants from diarrhoea is nearly half as much again among those
who are hand fed as among those who are nursed. There is no
doubt that bottle-feeding is the greatest cause of all of this disease.
(2) But Breast-Fed Infants do die of this Disease, and Why?
(a) Because of dirty surroundings. Quite as important as
keeping your house fresh and clean indoors is the need for keeping
the outside clean,also. Dirty yards are probably more dangerous
to infants than malarial swamps are to adults. Where the yard is
paved, as it always should be in tenement houses, it should be
swilled at least once a week. The gullies should be kept clean and
free from the slimy abominations which tend naturally to accumulate.
Accumulations of dung near houses in the neighbourhood
of stables are particularly dangerous. No refuse of any kind should
be permitted to lie either on the ground or on the paved yard.
Vegetable and animal matter should be burned. All else should be
put in the dustbin. Dustbins should always be kept covered and
placed as far as possible out of the sun. Moisture of any description
in the dustbin should be avoided. Where the back area is not
paved it should be cultivated. Even if things won't grow the ground
can be made tidy and sanitary by digging. It should be watered
frequently during hot dry weather. The domestic dust of foul
yards and houses is more dangerous than sewer gas. Remember,
if these things are neglected that properly constructed drains do not
safeguard you and your little ones from the evils of bad sanitation.
(b) Next to cleanliness inside and outside the house and cleanliness
of the body is the need for clean air. Over-crowded and illventilated
rooms not only injure permanently the health of all the
inmates, but specially endanger the infant to diarrhoea. It is
particularly important that slops and refuse should not be allowed in
the house a moment longer than is necessary. Windows should
never be closed.
ARTIFICAL FEEDING OF INFANTS.
Where baby is hand-fed the above precautions are of even greater
importance. The poison of diarrhoea is mostly conveyed in the milk.
But it is destroyed by boiling, Therefore all milk should be boiled. The
milk should be kept in a clean cool place, and the jug in which it is kept
covered with fine muslin to keep out the flies and dust. Flies undoubtedly
carry the infection both of diarrhoea and of other diseases. Baby's bottle
should be thoroughly cleansed and scalded in boiling water before each feed.