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48
"It is twice as dangerous to feed babies on condensed milk as on
fresh cows milk; it is 40 times as dangerous to feed a baby on cows
milk and 70 times as dangerous to feed a baby on condensed milk as
on mother's milk."
The great danger to infant life from hand feeding is due to ignorance
and inexperience on the part of the mothers, insanitary conditions
within and around the home, and domestic uncleanliness.
When these are in association with an unclean milk supply the life of
the hand-fed baby is always in serious danger.
What I said in 1907 is equally applicable in 1910.
The importance of a clean milk supply for the food of children is all
important, and the recent Notification of Births Act, if adopted, will
give ample opportunity of imparting to those in need of it, a knowledge
of healthy infant rearing.
If a crusade against ignorance, dirt, want of fresh air. and unhealthy
conditions generally in and about the house, can be organised through
its adoption, the wastage of child life from Diarrhœal diseases will soon
cease.
Our death-rate from Diarrhœa is similar to that of 1909, .22 per 1,000
against .5 for 1908, 1.04 in 1906, and .67 in 1905.
The corresponding rate in 1910 for the large towns was .38.
MEASLES AND WHOOPING COUGH.
There were 30 deaths registered during the year from Measles and 32
from Whooping Cough.
The deaths were fewer than in 1907, but as in previous years, they
were actually more than those from all the other Zymotic diseases
combined.
Sixteen of the deaths from Measles, and 31 of those from Whooping
Cough were in children under five years of age and account for onefourth
of all the deaths occurring at this age period.
Unfortunately neither disease is looked upon by parents or the public
as a dangerous infectious one.
Parents assume they are inevitable and the public seem unwilling to
incur any great expenditure in a serious effort to lessen their mortality
while enormous sums are spent yearly in the isolation and hospital
treatment of such a disease as Scarlet Fever, whose mortality is a
negligible one compared with that of Measles.
Excluding the years 1907 and 1909, the deaths from Whooping
Cough have been pretty uniform during the past twenty years and
averaged about thirty yearly.
Measles caused 87 deaths in 1895, and 52 and 55 deaths in 1903 and
1904, the remaining 17 years showed an alternate rise and fall with an
average mortality of thirty.