[Report 1910] / Medical Officer of Health, Clitheroe R.D.C.

  • Clitheroe (England). Rural District Council.
Date:
1910
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1910] / Medical Officer of Health, Clitheroe R.D.C. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    deaths was less than that for the year under review. In 1904 the number was seven, and in 1902 and 1905 it was eight. This, I am afraid, rather indicates that the position is more or less accidental and not due to increasing knowledge on the part of motheis as to how to treat and nurse their offspring in a really intelligent manner. It is very strange how the human mother, in very many instances, possesses the instinct of mothering so very slightly, while the lower animals possess it to .such perfection. How very very often the human mother proposes with the utmost cool'ness and indifference to bring up her infant—her most precious charge—“on the bottle” so as to be saved the bother or be freed from the ties that suckling involves. The milk which a beneficent Providence has bestowed upon her for the proper and most perfect sustenance of her young must be arrested and dried up by “backening plasters” or some other method, while her poor infant must suffer all the penalties and run all the risks only too frequently attending the artificial] methods of bringing up a child. Some very curious “dainties” are sometimes given to very young children. As an article of dietary, chipped i)Otatoe,s are not unknown, small pieces of meat to suck, bread not always soaked in milk (perchance in tea or beer); sometimes soup, and many other odds and ends have been given under the mistaken belief that such things are good for baby and will' help it to grow strong and vigorous. The mortality rate among infants is quite gratifyingly low for 1910, and if it can be kept down about the present level of 67.70 per 1,000 of births should furnish some strong evidence that women are acquiring .some adequate idea of how more perfectlv to fulfil the duties that nature and the sacred ol)ligations of motherhood have laid upon them