[Report 1905] / Medical Officer of Health, Nottingham City.

  • Nottingham (England). City Council.
Date:
1905
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1905] / Medical Officer of Health, Nottingham City. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    66/148 (page 60)
    to attack through its new food, but in the case of the ^^nd quarter we have no special alteration in the child’s life and surroundings to explain a higher death-rate at this period. Dr. Newshohne and other careful observers have shewn that in certain towns the proportion of breast fed, or reputedly breast fed, children is larger than has been commonly supposed; but, while recognizing very fully the value of the information thus given to us, we must not lose sight of facts like the following, which go to modify its simple significance :—(1) the practice of mothers in this regard varies much in different districts —in many industrial centres a large proportion of mothers with babies systematically go out to work, and leave the latter in charge of others, (2) the methods of feeding described by parents and others are not always as stated, and (3) a considerable proportion of nursing mothers—from their state of health, or their habits, or both—are totally unfit to nurse their babies. When we consider all this, and, further, the frequently filthy condition of the babies’ persons and surroundings, together with the fact that infants among the poor are continually sucking and licking various dirty things, not the least objectionable of which are the fingers so often put into their mouths, we realize that the problem of safeguarding the young life against the dangers of intestinal contamination is, like most other human problems—especially social and physiological problems —not simple and direct, but complicated in a high degree. It is indeed a fortunate' circumstance, in towns like Nottingham especially, that epidemic diarrhoea is not liable to propagate at all seasons, because the constant faecal contamination of the house and its curtilage from dry closets, to which I have referred under the heading of enteric fever, is an equally or even more potent factor for diarrhoea. Heat and drought are often spoken of as the causes of diarrhoea, but it