OUR BABIES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3514, 19 July 1921, Page 51

OUR BABIES.

HYGEIA.

By

Published under the auspices of tha Royal New Zealand Society for the Health of Women and Children. “it Is wiser to put up a fence at the top of a precipice than to maintain an ambulance at the bottom.”

THE QUALITY OF THE MILK SUPPLY AND THE HEALTH OF CHILDREN. We recently pointed out that the milk essential for the baby’s health is the milk drawn by the child from the mother’s breast, and tha-t great races, such as the Maori, were evolved, developed, and perfected without any other milk whatever. Further, that after weaning a larger and larger proportion of the food given should need thorough masticating and insalivating so as to give full exorcise to ja.ws, teeth, and salivary glands; and that by the time a child is two years of age only a minority of the food should be in the form of milk and soft mushy solids. However, Cow.’s milk, in strict moderation, is desirable throughout childhood, and the condition, in which the milk is given is a matter of supreme importance. When suckled in the natural way the milk of every mammal is for a time the ideal food for its own progeny, but, without modification, it is never a proper food for any mammal widely removed in type.— especially in the rate of growth of the young being. Further, whenever the milk is drawn oif artificially, and fed even to the mothers own progeny, a source of danger is introduced which lies at the root of a-H the difficulties and diseases which have to be faced in the artificial rearing of broth the baby and the calf—-the only two creatures commonly fed on milk which has been drawn off from the body and kept for a variable time under very variable conditions. Lord Lister, the great surgeon, who shared with Pasteur the early triumphs of research into the life of microbes and their relation to disease in plants and animals, remarked that the one fluid which seemed to suit all microbes and to favour their rapid growth and multiplication was milk. This gives a key to the extreme danger of this fluid food unless it- is protected and safeguarded as far as possible bom contamination with germs at the milking-time and kept as free as may be from further contamination up to the time of use as food. However, much more than this is necessary. Even where great c-are is taken to keep the cows as clean as possible and to ensure cleanliness with regard to the utensils and the milkers some thousands of germs per teaspoonful have got into the milk by the time it is poured out of the bucket or received from the milking machine. Contamination to this extent with ordinary microscopic germs (not specific germs such as those of tubercle, typhoid or scarlet fever) is not injurious, provided the germs are prevented from undergoing rapid growth and multiplication. The first essential is rapid cooling immediately after milking, which ought to be insisted on in every case, but is not usually ca riled O-ut-. RAPID GROWTH OF GERMS IN WARM FLUIDS. The ideal temperature for all germs is about the same as the ideal temperature for the living cells of our own bodies —in other words, blood-heat or lOOcleg Fabr. At anywhere near this temperature all germs multiply with enormous rapidity, so that in the course of a few hours thousands per teaspoonful may be represented by hundreds of thousands —and soon by millions. In the case of ordinary milk, as delivered in summer (where proper precautions have not been taken in the way of keeping out germs, cooling- the milk down rapidly and keeping it cool) it is quite a common thing for millions of microbes per teaspoonful to have accumulated, even where the milk has not reached the stage of turning sour. Scalding or pasteurising, followed by rapid cooling and keeping cool, prevents further deterioration of such milk, but cannot restore it- to its original freshness, purity, and freedom from bacterial products. Except in extreme cases, such milk may not apparently disagree with children, but its wholesorneness is more or less impaired, and it must always be regarded as a source of possible disagreement and danger even after being heated up and cooled down. TEMPERATURES UNFAVOURABLE TO MICROBES. The further the temperature of a fluid departs frbm blood-heat (ICOdeg Fahr) the less favourable it becomes to the growth and multiplication of microbes, and when the temperature falls below 40deg Fahr. or rises above 120 deg Fahr. growth and multiplication practically cease. It will be noticed that an incease of 20deg in the temperature of the fluid is as unfavourable to microbie activity as a fall of 60dog Fahr. Further, microbes (not merely the spores) may remain alive below freezing point, but practically all germs die when pasteurised i. 0., subjected to a temperature of about 15-Odcg Fab'-, for a quarter of an hour. This dees pot kill the spores, but it- kills all active living germs and renders milk or other fluids safe for, say, 24 hours if they are. cooled down quickly, loosely covered, and kept between 50dcg and 60dog Fahr! or even somewhat above this. As we shall show in the next article, the growth of microbes in milk often occurs mainly in the home after delivery, owing to lack of knowledge and simple precautions, care, and attention on the part of the housewife. Don’t blame Ihe milkman for everything. Often enough he is not to blame at ail.