OUR BABIES.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2431, 20 February 1909, Page 9 (Supplement)

OUR BABIES.

Published under the 'auspices of the locioty for the Promotion of the Health of Women and Children .

WHY MILK FAILS TO KEEP.

Even in the warmest weather milk cannot go bad so long as we exclude the little microscopic specks called germs or microbes. It is hard to 'make people believe that any liquid food may be freely exposed to perfectly pure air for weeks or months without appreciable change, beyond ; evaporation, yet such is the case. If the cow is kept as clean as possible and hosed down before milking, and is provided with a clean liolland cover for the belly, flanks, and udder, it is possible to get a bottle of pure milk quite free from germs. However, iii spite of -all precautions one or more germ-s will be practically sure to gain entry to some of our bottles, though witli due attention a larger or smaller proportion will be germ-free. Such milk will keep quite indefinitely if we carefully plug the mouth of the bottle with sterilised cotton wool. The cotton wool acts- as a filter, preventing the entry of germs, but letting the air pass in and out. Microbes are solid living particles, and, small as they -arc, they are heavier than the air in which they are suspended. This causes them to be constantly falling and settling. There may bo only a few dozens or there may bo thousands in the air of a room, but be there few or many, they are settling,, settling all the time, so that every solid object becomes covered with as it would become covered with line dust. Our damp, finely corrugated, hairy hands form wonderful germ-collectors, and we may pick up enough to spoil a tankful of milk by merely placing the tips of our fingers on an apparently clean snow-white linen table-cloth which has lain spread on the table from one meal-time to another. DEALING WITH GERMS.

The simplest means of getting rid of germs is to wash them away with pure boiled water. Thus we cleanse our hands, utensils, cloths, and every solid collecting object. The most oifectivo way to kill germs present in a fluid is to boil the fluid, but prolonged boiling is needed to kill certain seeds, or rather spores, of the most resistive microbes. On the other hand, living germs that have “hatched out” are readily killed, few of them being -able to stand heating to loOdeg. Fahr. for five minutes. This gives us the key to dealing with milk. We heat to 15odeg. Fahr. for five or ten minutes, and then cool the fluid rapidly by placing the vessel in running water. The object of cooling is to prevent the hatching and multiplying of spores. In warm fluids, on the contrary., germs increase with marvellous rapidity. Thus it is round that clear spring water kept in the house in a water-bottle for a few days will become crowded with microbes. In this condition the taste and smell are often distinctly unpleasant, and such water is lible to give rise to diarrhoea. CHICKENS AND CALVES. Water provided for fowls, if left stagnating for a day in warm summer weather, is liable to carry off crowds of promising chickens bu causing chicken cholera or summer diarrhoea. The microbes which have been growing apace in the mixture of warm water and food-particles derived from the bills of the fowls grow still more rampantly iu the warmer bowels of the chickens. The same tiling occurs in the ease of hand-fed calves, unless we are extremely careful as to the cleansing of the cans and the freshness and purity of the milk.

Almost every calf that dies dies from

“scouring” or 'diarrhoea caused by crowds of living microbes which have been allowed to develop and multiply in the milk. The summer-diarrhoea of bottle-fed babies is practically the same disease, and arises from the same cause combined with unsuitable composition of the food and defective hygiene (lack of fresh air, sunshine, exercise, etc.). MILK AND MICROBES.

Milk may bo regarded as the universal food for germs —the medium in which all germs revel and grow apace, unless it is properly safeguarded. Lord Lister, the father of modern surgery, writing on “Fermentation,” said: “1 once met with a microbe, but only one, that would not live on milk; for, extremely numerous as the varieties of germs are, 'almost all of them seem to thrive in that liquid.” if not present in comparatively large numbers in milk, and if mostly in the unhatched spore stage, ordinary microbes... do little or no harm when swallowed, but,, if abundant, they and their products are capable of bringing about diarrhoea, poisoning, and death in a very short time. This cannot be too strongly insisted on, because one often hears people say: “Oh, well, seeing there are such crowds of germs everywhere, and seeing that we must swallow plenty of them, a few thousands, more or Jess, cannot make much difference.” No argument could be more fallacious. In the course of their growth microbes give off poisonous substances, and tho effect of these, as regards the baby, will depend mainly on the total amount of such poison introduced into or generated in the alimentary canal. A hundredth of a grain of strychnine may act as a tonicami do actual good where a grain would cure almost instantaneous convulsions and speedy death, and so it is with the products of microbes. TOWN MILK SUPPLY.

via summer time the milk as it is delivered at the home is liable to be crowded with germs) and will certainly be so if what is sold as the morningT supply happens to be mixed, as it frequently is-, with the previous evening’s milking. Milk, ns it is delivered in the poorer quarters of New York and other cities, ( is. found to contain sometimes as many as five million microbes per tcaspoonful! The following illustration shows tho contrast between the miroscopic appearance of pure fresh cow’s mil'k free from germs and contaminated milk: The circles are the fat-globules suspended in the clear invisible fluid of .the milk—this fluid being a solution of milk-sugar, proteids, and salts. Note, in the lower, impure specimen, the crowds of microbes, and also the coalescing of the fat globules, as shown by the increased _ size and smaller number of the circles. Not only do the microbes give off poisonous products, hut they feed on the milk, and radically change its nature and properties.

PREVENTION. . To prevent danger from microbes ■ been properly safeguarded and rapidly cooled by means of running water immediately after milking. . . (2) If cold water is available in the home, the mother should further chill the milk directly she receives H by placing the jug in cool running water for half an hour, or putting h in changes of cool water seveial tU (3) S ' Keep the cooled milk loosely covered in a cool airy outside safe, as directed above. (4) If in iany -doubt as to the wcatlier, or as to proper cooling, don’t keep the milk (prepared or otherwise) for more than 12 hours without heating or reheating to loodeg. Falir. for, say, 10 minutes. Then cool rapidly in water. Keep the jug loosely covered and as cool as possible, outside the house.

(5) On the very warmest days it may be advisable to scald or even boil the portion of the baby’s milk which remains over m the evening, and then cool rapidly, and keep as cool as possible. This is not needed or desirable where there are proper facilities for cooling and 'keeping cool, heating to 156 degrees for 10 minutes being then sufficient. Too much emphasis cannot be placed on the urgent need to cool milk as rapidly as possible with water after it lias been lieated. Otherwise stray germs which find entry will grow and multiply with extreme rapidity.

(6) If milk is .set for preparing “top-milk” on very warm summer days it is safer not to let the jug stand for more than six hours, unless the milk is very fresh. When received and can be kept all the time at or below 55 degrees Falir., standing for the shorter period results in a lower percentage of fat in the baby’s food, but this is really an advantage since the need of the body for fuel is lessened when the weather is warm. Further, the giving of less far at such times diminishes the tendency to summer diarrhoea.