The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine (May 1913): Vol. LXXXVI. New Series: Vol. LXIV. May to October, 1913Various
History
The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine (May 1913): Vol. LXXXVI. New Series: Vol. LXIV. May to October, 1913
Various
Periodicals
Eight years ago there was not one infants’ milk station in New York.
The babies of the poor were obliged to live on what milk could be
found easily for them. Few could afford and still fewer could find
what is known as “Grade A” milk, which sells in the commercial market
for from fifteen to twenty-five cents a quart, and which is thoroughly
inspected and certified. At the close of 1912 there were seventy-nine
such stations in the city. At every one Grade A milk was sold at the
nominal price of eight cents a quart, so as to be in easy competition
with ordinary commercial milk. Every day thousands of mothers with
their babies throng these stations. However, their chief purpose is
not the mere selling of pure, rich milk. They serve principally as
dispensaries. The milk is used by the city as a lure by means of which
ignorant mothers are brought within the reach of the physicians of
the Health Department. With the milk, thorough instruction and advice
as to the care of infants is given gratis. The old idea that mothers
know entirely how best to care for their own children has been proved
erroneous. Not all mothers in a large city know how to care for their
children. Many of them are virtually as helpless as the children
themselves. They have to be taken in hand, trained, and taught in the
care of their offspring as completely as the children themselves are
taken in hand a few years later in the public schools.
In addition to the seventy-nine dispensaries of milk and medical
knowledge, the city maintains a large corps of trained nurses who make
visits, especially during the summer, to the homes to complete the
instruction. In the poorer districts, every child under a year old is
visited by a city nurse at least once in ten days. The average cost is
fifty cents a month for each child. At the same time the inspection of
the general milk-supply has become thorough. The city’s inspectors now
cover all farms within two hundred miles from the city hall, and the
sources of supply are thus kept in proper sanitary condition.
The city also gives ice in summer to those families (with children)
that are unable to buy it. In the summer of 1912, 900,000 pounds were
thus distributed. This is in addition to the accepted efforts to secure
better playgrounds, better ventilated schools, etc.
A decade ago the summer death-rate among children in New York was from
two to three times as high as the winter death-rate. For the last four
years it has been steadily decreasing, and in 1912 it was almost as low
as the winter death-rate. Deaths from diarrheal diseases among children
have been reduced to a minimum through the concentrated efforts of a
few years. The next work to be taken up will be the winter deaths from
respiratory diseases. This is a more difficult problem.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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