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53
Breast-fed children died from Epidemic Diarrhoea at the rate of 12½
per cent. Children otherwise fed at the rate of 87½ per cent.
From the nature of milk and milk foods as at present administered
this cannot be wondered at, when conditions are favourable to the
growth of micro-organisms and their resulting poisons.
Milk as it comes from the cow contains a large number of these bodies,
and milk is the most favourable medium for their development in the
presence of heat, especially when time elapses between milking and
consumption. Joined to this, the many hands through which it passes
offer every facility for pollution.
Breast milk is the natural food of all babies, but for many reasons
all cannot have it, and must have some substitute. The nearer this
substitute comes to the natural food the better for the baby, and the
more similar the conditions surrounding its preparation the less will be
the Diarrhoea death rate. That the breast milk substitutes are not so
much at fault as the surrounding conditions of their preparation, is
evident from the fact that very little Diarrhoea occurs except when great
heat is allowed to develop bacterial growth and decomposition of the
baby's food, and all steps taken to counteract these bad influences is
work in the right direction to check Infantile Death Mortality.
Dr. Thresh went to a great deal of trouble a few years since to effect
some improvement in this direction in the Metropolitan area of Essex,
and hopes were held out that some of out large milk purveyors would
put down some plant for the preparation of milk suitable for infant
feeding in this district.
All the efforts then put forth came to naught as far as Walthamstow
was concerned, and we are to day in the same position as in 1898.
This is not creditable to us, considering how much has been done in
other localities and in mere villages on the Continent, in providing a
proper milk diet for young children. As I point out elsewhere, to have
a healthy adult population you must start with the baby, and every
condition that makes for his well-being tends to improve the race and
the physical well-being of the community.
The Municipal Milk Depots of Battersea and elsewhere, conceived
in the proper spirit and on scientific lines, have not been instrumental
in the amount of good otherwise attainable, owing to the costliness of
production and distribution of their milk. You are much more
favourably circumstanced in this respect owing to the recent development
of machinery for the making of dry milk, and the large area of
land in your possession for the purposes of cowkeeping.
Some three years ago, backed by Dr. Thresh—an eminent scientific
and Public Health expert—I reported favourably on the feasibility of