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10
your child always has a handkerchief and that he makes a
point of covering his mouth and nose with it when he coughs
or sneezes. See, too, that food that is likely to be eaten without
further cooking is protected from flies. For your child's own
protection, as well as the protection of others, teach him also to
wash his hands without, fail after using the w.c. and before
sitting down to meals.
If all these good habits were learned by everyone in childhood,
many infectious diseases, including infantile paralysis,
would occur less often than they do to-day."
The observance of these rules of cleanliness is quite obviously
very difficult or even impossible for very many persons engaged
in purveying ice cream to the public, yet ice cream, unlike fruit,
cannot be washed or rendered safe from any contamination that
has taken place before and after sale.
While the public is exhorted to take every precaution in
preparing and eating food in their own homes, ice cream, found
on sampling to be bacteriologically unsatisfactory and containing
in many instances fæcal coli, is sold from stalls in street markets
or from kiosks on the street where the only facilities for cleanliness
are afforded by public or public house conveniences, or,
having been placed in cones by dirty hands, is sold from open
windows to be eaten in the dusty street.
Obviously, contamination will be much more probable in
circumstances under which the washing of hands after visiting
lavatories is most improbable and the following example illustrates
how important the " personal" element may be. An ice
cream manufacturer in the borough, who had spent some
thousands of pounds in installing first-class equipment, was
found on sampling to be consistently turning out grade 1 ice
cream. Then suddenly the samples showed that grade 4 ice cream,
containing faecal coli, was being manufactured. Since it seemed
that every precaution to prevent contamination was being taken,
this sudden deterioration in the grades of samples was extremely
puzzling, until during the course of his investigation, the inspector
noticed two girls leave for the lavatory and return to their work
without first washing their hands. These girls were immediately
discharged, and after some general cleaning up the samples
reverted to grade 1 and this standard has since been maintained.
Prior to the war a very high standard was reached with
regard to dairies; the Council having laid down the following
conditions of registration in March, 1930 :
(1) The lighting and ventilation of the "dairy" must be
adequate and maintained in a satisfactory condition.