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114
Of the 116 living of whom the record is complete for the
first year, 106 were breast-fed on the first visit; of these, 95, or
82 per cent. were breast-fed for six months or longer, and 11
became hand-fed before six months of age.
55. With the permission of the Public Health Committee,
I attended the Health Congress at Leeds in July, 1909, and
contributed a paper in the Preventive Medicine Section on
"Educational Aspects of a Municipal Milk Depot, of which
the following is a summary, which indicates in few words the
aims and scope of Health Visitor's work:—
"The object of this paper is to give some account of the
supplemental usefulness of a Municipal Milk Depot in furthering
the education of mothers and the experience of Women
Health Workers. It is not concerned with the arguments for
its primary object, i.e., the supply of pure milk for infants.
•
The ultimate factor in the reduction of infant mortality is
an educated motherhood. We have to replace ignorant
tradition with a widespread simple scientific teaching. All
possible aids on the educational side must be used; the ignorant
adult mind being harder to teach than the child mind.
Schools for mothers are not yet within the scope of municipal
enterprise. A milk depot may be made into a genuine centre
of education by developing the "consultation" side by means
of a properly organised periodical weighing day, which is open
to breast-fed as well as depot·fed infants.
The educational ends of the depot may be summarised as
follows:—
1. By its actual existence it demonstrates that infant feeding
is a matter of some real importance; imperceptibly
this affects the general conciousness.