Report to the Local Government Board upon the available data in regard to the value of boiled milk as a food for infants and young animals / by Janet E. Lane-Claypon.
- Janet Lane-Claypon
- Date:
- 1912
Licence: In copyright
Credit: Report to the Local Government Board upon the available data in regard to the value of boiled milk as a food for infants and young animals / by Janet E. Lane-Claypon. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![Ai’tificial feeding’ a])peai’s to have been introduced about the middle of the 18th century In the Middle Ages suckling seems to have been continued much longer than at present, its duration being considerably shortened as soon as artificial feeding became known. Our knowledge of the degree of infantile mortality in the Middle Ages and later is necessarily very defective, owing to the incom- pleteness and unreliability or absence of records. There seems little doubt that the mortality among young children was extremely high. Malthus says “ In London, according to former calculations, one half of the born died under three years of age ; in Vienna and Stockholm under two ; in Manchester under five ; in Norwich under five ; in Northampton under ten.” He speaks frequently of the high mortality in foundling hospitals and similar institutions, and says “ The child is taken under the protection of the parish, and generally dies, at least in London, within the first year.” It has been shown that a high mortality among young children is in direct relationship to the mortality among infants. It is there- fore highly probable that in the pre-statistical period the mortality among infants was very high. It is also probable that the prolonged suckling was as injurious to both the mothers and children of those days as it is now, and that it played a not unimportant part in the production of a high mortality among young children. * Artificial feeding spread, as was only natural, most rapidly in foundling hospitals and similar institutions ; as a result, the death-rate, which was already high (cp. Malthus, quoted above), rose to an alarming extent, and regulations were enforced in regard to the breast-feeding of infants. Towards the end of the 19th century it was discovered that milk contained large numbers and varieties of bacteria, and that the tubercle bacillus was not infrequently one of them. The practice of boiling milk was introduced in order to destroy the bacteria. The movement started in Paris in the year 1892 by Prof. Budin for distributing boiled inilk to artificially- fed babies spread rapidly both in France and Germany. In a large number of places boiled or sterilised milk was distributed to artificially-fed children, under medical supervision. The results surpassed all expectations, and it was hoped that a remedy for preventable infantile mortality had been found. These hopes have not been entirely justified. Recent researches upon infantile mortality have shown that many factors are concerned in the causation of a high infant death-rate. The experience and know- ledge gained by the modern schools of pediatricians have shown that regulation of the food, and other points apparently insignificant, are often of great importance. When it was found that the giving of boiled milk did not alone prevent excessive infantile mortality, the question arose as to whether some vital properties of the milk were destroyed by heating. Much work has been done in investigating this point, as will be seen from the following pages of this report. It is to be regretted that the ])roblem has not infrequently been obscured by ^ The small figures in brackets refer to the bibliography on pp. 57-00.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b28143310_0006.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
