Address on a National League for Physical Education and Improvement : delivered at the Annual Meeting of the Manchester Children's Hospital, February 24th, 1905 / by Sir Lauder Brunton.

Brunton, Thomas Lauder, Sir, 1844-1916.

Date:: [1905]

Credit: Address on a National League for Physical Education and Improvement : delivered at the Annual Meeting of the Manchester Children's Hospital, February 24th, 1905 / by Sir Lauder Brunton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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$tliose who have already given so largely to the Manchester liospital, and have raised it to such a state of efficiency, will not allow it to remain behind others, but will provide the lands necessary to make it as good as others elsewhere. And perhaps here I may direct their attention to the out- ])atient department of the Western Infiimary at Glasgow as an example of what an out-patient department ought to be. I trust that the citizens of Manchester will not allow themselves to be outdone by their northern neighbours, and will supply accommodation as good, if not even better, ihan that of the AVestern Infirmary. The thii’d most imi)ortant factor in the mortality of variable disease is infantile diarrhoea. This disease depends very closely upon I'xternal temperature, and Weir Mitchell made a very remark- able curve showing that the number of cases occurring in his clinique varied almost exactly with the external tempera- ture. Great heat, no doubt, tells upon the babies themselves, and weakens their resisting power, but the general way in which it produces diarrhcca is by causing the milk witli which the babies are supplied to undergo change whereby it becomes con\ erted from a useful food into a dangerous poison. It is not only milk which is actually sour that is harmful, for milk just beginning to turn sour or “on the turn,” as it is sometimes called, turns sour in the stomach, and has the same injurious effect as if it were sour in the bottle. The addition of so-called preservatives to the milk appears sometimes to make it even more dangerous than when sour, for while these preservatives prevent the action of the bacillus which causes lactic fermenta- tion and produces acidity, they allow other bacilli to act which instead of producing acidity actually produce virulent poisons, poisons which are all the more dangerous because they are not readily detected by the taste and smell as sourness is. Boiling destroys all bacilli, and not only keeps the milk sweet for a longer time but prevents the poisonous change of which I have spoken, and also prevents danger from infection by typhoid germs which might be present in impure water used to wash out the churns. Milk may not only have a poisonous action itself and may convey typhoid infection from water mixed with it, but it may convey other diseases. Many of yqu may$