Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 September 1875 — Death in the Nursing Bottle. [ARTICLE]

Death in the Nursing Bottle.

In a city like ours, where the death rate at the present season averages 700 to 800 per week, mostly children, every humane person feels the necessity of increased vigilance to combat every evil which tends to Increase “the slaughter of the innocents.” High temperature is one of the causes which we are powerless to combat. Dirty streets and filthy houses we must "leave to the Board of Health. Poverty of the parents, which prevents their providing suitable food and medicine for their little ones, is another cause of our great infantile mortality, against which we can and ought to do something. But ignorance is another cause, too often overlooked, against which we are not powerless if we organize for action. The daily papers warn old and young against the dangers of unripe fruit and stale watermelons; but people will indulge, and we must allow the American citizen, however young, to exercise his inalienable right to take his own life in this way. But there is another prolific source of infant mortality to which we wish now to direct special attention, namely: the patent nursing bottle. It consists of a rubber tube, one end of which is held in the child’s mouth; the other end, passing through a cork, is attached to a glass rod which descends to the bottom of a bottle of so-called milk. We might write a column on the dangers that reside in the milk, unless special care has been taken to obtain it fresh or by suitably diluting pure condensed milk. But this danger is well known, and our business at present is with the bottle, or rather its dirty tube, which should never be used' more than once'fthen thrown away and a new one bought. Even when new, these white tubes, impregnated as they are with oxide of zinc, are not unobjectionable; far worse are they when saturated with sour milk, germs of putrefaction, decay and disease. Some of these child-murdering Yankee inventions have reached Berlin, and have called forth the following from a practicing physician of that city: “ The supposed advantage of these bottles consists in this, that they can be placed beside the infant in bed, while other bottles must be held in the hand all the time. What sensible mother or nurse would have a child with a-bottle without watching it? The danger of the bottle consists in this, that it is absolutely impossible to cleanse it. When sucked on, little particles of milk become attached to the tube and cork; these curdle and soon turn sour. If some of this deposit be placed under a microscope we see innumerable bacteria, organic beings which indicate decompositiqn and decay. At every meal the child draws in thousands of these germs. The decomposition process acts upon what it finds in tha mouth, esophagus and stomach; and the result is diarrhea, cholera, infantum, etc. I will here expressly remark that the usual method of placing the apparatus in water, or merely rinsing it out with a stream of water” is in no way. sufficient. Some dealers sell a suitable little wire brush with the bottle, but even this does not answer the purpose, for the apparatus is not clean by a long way after drawing the brush through it several times; and who will take the trouble to clean it so thoroughly eight or ten times a day? How much time it would require! Another disadvantage is that the bottle is air-tight, and a partial vacuum is formed, which renders sucking so difficult as tmexhaust the child, and it stops before its hunger is satisfied. Hence, parents, ye who are compelled to feed your children with a bottle, throw away this apparatus, which can only bring destruction upon your children, and either select a bottle with glass mouthpiece, which is filled from below, or take a large rubber mouthpiece, which is perforated by a small hole and can be drawn directly over the neck ot the glass bottle. This large mouthpiece or nipple can readily be turned inside out and thoroughly cleaned and rubbed with dry salt.” —Scientific American.