SLAUGHTER OF CHILDREN

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 140, 9 December 1911, Page 9 (Supplement)

SLAUGHTER OF CHILDREN

THE DEADLY HOUSE ELY. The world is awakening to the true character of the household fly. For genera lions it has been regarded as a harmless and unavoidable little evil. Medical' men have now laid against it a terrible charge. It is branded as a conveyor and disseminator of disease, and the indirect means of the slaughter of thousands upon thousands of human beings. Its ravages arc deadliest among infants. . During the early part of this year a drastic campaign of fly-killing started in the United States, as a result of which many millions of flics were killed. Similar work on a smaller scale is being done in Great Britain. In Victoria the Board of Public Health baa thrown down the gauntlet as an announcement that during the coming summer the people of Australia will be expected to do their best to exterminate the familiar little murderers. War has been declared. It is not to be a mere hoarding war. The department does not propose to proceed only by means of alarming posters. The war is to be a war of annihilation. The board has discovered an effective method of disposing of the fly wholesale—by means of a special solution of formalin.

'Several French scientists have been engaged recently in making a series of tests of (methods by which the fly may be most easily destroyed. Tests of a like character have been pursued in Victoria and the mixture decided on consists of a teaspoonful, of formalin poured first into a cup, followed by half a cup of water, and finally by half a cup of mixture of milk and sugar. This is to be sprinkled in drops over small sheets of cardboard or linoleum, and will attract the flies in large numbers. The tendency in the past has been to mix too strong a solution of formalin, which the flies would not touch. The method of pouring the mixture into a saucer was not very successful, owing to the natural objection of the fly to drowning. A similar mixture with 10 per cent, of formalin and milk will be found effective for destroying the fly in stables. The following article by Mr. E. S, Grey, published in the London Daily Graphic, sketches the English campaign against infantile mortality:—: With regard to infantile mortality, science does not march; it is groping its way; and the best that it can do at the present time is to enlighten public opinion as to the chief causes which are responsible for the high death-rate among'children in cities; while medicine seeks for the best methods of reducing it.

This year it was expected that the hot weather would bring in its train a rise in the death rate, especially among slum children of the towns; and the expectation has been justified from London to Leeds. The two allied diseases which cause the great increase of mortality are dysentery and enteritis; and, as they are in many aspects dirt diseases, the product of unhealthy, dirty dwellings, unclean and improper food, and, above all, of unclean milk, it was, and is, to be expected that poor people's babies will suffer most.

Mr. John Burns pointed out some time ago in an address to the. National Conference oh Infantile Mortality that while 11 per 1000 was the general deathrate for the rich ami Royal borough of Kensington, in some of the poorer portions of it the' rate ran up to SO per 1000, a figuro due to the fact that in some special districts' of it, a limited shun area, the infant mortality rose to something between 300 and 400* per 1000 per annum. In other words, one slum child out of every three died. Mr. John Burns hoped much from the spread of information regarding the causes of these deaths of children; but this year had produced figures that aro nearly as appalling as any previous one, and when the long continuance of the epidemic of the seasonal infantile maladies is reckoned, it is believed that 11)11 will rival the years 1897, IS9O and 1904, when the' number of deaths' was regarded as exceptionally large. Taking London as a whole, the greatest weekly mortality of children under one year of age this year was 237 deaths for every 1000 children, born; and that rate of a little less than one in four was exceeded in the other years we have mentioned. But the epidemic has his year lasted longer, though it has now sunk T,o 107 per 1000, or less than one in six, and is still sinking. It is, as we have termed it. a seasonal disease, always recurring in the same months, and even the same weeks, of the year, and beginning to decline before the middle of September. Hot, dry weather makes it worse; cool, wet weather reduces it. so that it falls below what medical men regard as the proportions of an epidemic. ' Two years ago, for example, at a timo when a concerted enquiry was projected by the bacteriologists and physicians of the London hospitals, the number of deaths from the seasonal disease fell so much below expectation that the results of he enquiry were not conclusive. At the same time a good deal of work has been done both in England and in the United States in investigating tho micro-organisms which cause the disease, and the means by which it is carried. There are two forms of the disease. The first, which is more common in America, is infantile dysentery, and is associated with the typical bacillus. Another allied malady is found there, but it is more common in England. This disease has been the subject of investigations by Drs. Morgan and Dedingham, and the continual occurrence of a specific micro-organism in cases of the disease has been established. There'seems no doubt whatever that the majority of cases of so-called enteritis among infants is caused by a specific microbe. This microbe produces symptoms which differ from those of the dysentery bacillus, and appears to act in a different way. It produces what are called general toxaemic conditions, which, being interpreted, means that it sets up a form of poisoning of the system. During the past two years Dr. Morgan and others have been trying to produce a curative serum from this bacillus, and it has been tried in some of the London children's hospitals during the present epidemic. With what success it is not yet possible to say, because, the figures ' are not yet made out. But this much seems to be certain—that the present state of knowedgo concerning the cures of these infantile maladies is very deficient. It is hardly too much to say that the work will all have to be done over again. At present there are several cures which are being tried; most of them empirical, or dictated by the doctors' previous experience of what is the best • way of dealing with the disease. To these cures particular attention has been drawn for two reasons. The first is that this year tho disease or diseases have been verv far from confining themselves to the children of the slums; they have spread to the children of the well-to-do and of the middle class. Some children are lew likely to be infected because of the healthier conditions under which thev live, and the greater cleanliness of the food which is given to them. .But they are not less susceptible to the disease if they are brought into contact with it, any more than they are less susceptible to measles or whooping cough.

And (.here is cute carrier'of the disease which cannot be warded off. We I refer to the common house fly, which lias a Hying range of about a mile, and can and does carry the microbe of the disease from tiie slum to the well-to-do house, and there deposits it on any food on which it can conveniently alight. The food most often and most readily infected is milk, because milk is a susbstance which nourishes microbes as welL as babies, and is, in fact, a peculiarly rich field for infection. So evidently is this the case that some doctors, as soon as they have found children suffering from the disease, have at once cut off the milk, and have tried to feed them on other liquid nourishment, Rut milk is by no means the only thing to which the house-fly can carry the mircobe of infection, 'it could infect jellies, meat, fish, butter and many other foods. It can and 'does infect condensed milk. In fact, Dr. Savage, of Colchester, has pointed out as his experience that the proportion of children who die is very much greater among those fed upon condensed milk than those upon ordinary milk. The cause of this is not fax to seek. * It does not come from the composition of the condensed milk, but because of the opportunities for the contamination of such milk. A great deal of good has been done in recent years by the spread of intelligence regarding the necessity for clean milk; but while it is of the highest importance for children's health' and future not merely at times of epidemics, but at all times, that they should be fed on clean milk, it is immensely more important at times of epidemics that all their food should be preserved from contamination. As we have said, the chief cause of contamination is the house fly, which, according to the latest researches, is believed to carry the infection from the unclean, insanitary neighborhood to the clean one on its gummy feet and hairy head; and most probably to harbor the microbe in its own interior. It is not easy to see how we can combat the house fly; it would be very difficult to kill off'its hidden and ever-springing millions; and one can only hone to reduce its noxiousness by ensuring better sanitary conditions in the neighborhoods which feed it.

This brief review of the situation would be incomplete wihout- reference to M. Quinton's salt water injection treatment of the disease, M. Quinton put forward 'the hypothesis some years ago that sea water was very largely identical with the saline flow of the blood—that, nearly colorless salty fluid in which the red blood corpuscles and the white corpuscles float. We need not here enter into his theory of the physiological reason for supposing his. treatment effective. Suffice it to say that he hit upon the idea of injecting sea water into the veins.