Report of the proceedings of the National conference on infantile mortality : held in the Caxton hall, Westminster, on the 23rd, 24th, and 25th March 1908, president - Right Hon. John Burns.

  • National Conference on Infantile Mortality.
Date:
1908
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Report of the proceedings of the National conference on infantile mortality : held in the Caxton hall, Westminster, on the 23rd, 24th, and 25th March 1908, president - Right Hon. John Burns. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    great a difference in the mortality rate. My own ex- perience has been that it is not so much the death rate that is unfavourable, as that the morbidity rate in later childhood is excessive. Patent-food babies seem to suffer severely from bronchitis and convulsions, which are often wrongly attributed to the influence of dentition. A high standard of purity has to be maintained by milk dealers, and the Government proposes to impose still more stringent restrictions on the production and distribution of milk. What applies to milk should surely apply also to milk substitutes. If we have a standard for the one, why should we not have one for the others also ? At present if a milk dealer sells milk from which the fat has been abstracted, he commits an offence under the “ Sale of Foods and Drugs Acts.” On the other hand, a man may water his milk, and call it “ Blank’s Extra Nourishing Food,” and make a fortune, because when sold under such a title it is constituted a proprietary food for which there is no standard. And for this Extra Nourishing Food he may make a charge of five or six times as high as that which he would be able to charge for pure milk. Therefore, while we are watching the back door for the fraudulent milkman the fraudulent seller of infants’ food comes in at the front. A man who sells a bad infants’ food is surely a worse offender than a man who sells watered milk, because he picks pockets on a larger scale. Under the belief that these foods are all that is claimed for them, many a poor woman deprives herself of the necessities of life in order that she may provide her infant with what she considers to be essential for it. Granted that a substitute for cow’s milk may at times be necessary, and that foods of the kind that are sold under proprietary titles can fulfil this requirement, it is a pity that there is not some means of providing these foods at a reasonable price. As a matter of fact,