VIEW OF KAILUNWAN.
m
Extract from Dr. G. M. Harston's Book Care and Treatment of European Children in the Tropics."
The most powerful argument that the practitioner in the tropics can advance to the parents in favour of natural feeding is that deduced from facts. In the United Kingdom the infantile mortality from gastro-intestinal disorders is 3.5 per cent.; in India the mortality from the same cause is 13.4 per cent. The admission rate for the same complaints in the United Kingdom amounts to 103.5 per 1,000, in India to 96.2 per 1,000; so that, although the admission rate is less in India, the mortality is nearly four times as great as that in the United Kingdom. The incidence of these gastro-intestinal disorders is found to fall almost entirely on artificially reared infants. With a good milk supply from a well organized and sanitary dairy, artificial feeding can be carried out with impunity, but good dairy farms are scarce in the tropics. Hong Kong is the fortunate possessor of one of the finest dairy farms in the Far East. The ravages of hæmorrhagic septicemia and foot-and-mouth disease, the bane of tropical dairy farms, have been reduced to a minimum in the Hong Kong farm as a result of scientific investigation and prophylaxis; but this result has only been attained after years of practical experience. The food supply of the cows is carefully supervised, and each shed and compound has its own separate staff of milkers, so that on the outbreak of disease of any kind. isolation is easily carried out and the disease checked immediately. Further- more, there is less likelihood of the milkers conveying to the sheds the carriers of disease-viz. ticks, biting-flies and other insects. Strangers are not admitted without a special order from the directors-an order difficult to obtain. This rule has the effect of materially reducing the number of abortions which fre- quently occur amongst cows imported to the tropics. I have merely mentioned these few facts to illustrate the many difficulties which beset the efficient conduct of dairy farms in tropical countries. As an instance of the efficiency which can be obtained by a dairy farm conducted on scientific principles, I may further add that milk sterilized at the Hong Kong farm has been conveyed by travellers from that port through Burmah, India, up the Nile, and, finally, to London, where it has been found on analysis to be equal in quality to the best that could be obtained in the Metropolis. Large sums of money have been spent by governments in establishing sanitary dairy farms in the tropics, mostly with disappointing results. The above few facts, however, may further stimulate the efforts of authorities in this direction.
EXTERIOR
AT MAINS OF
OF DAIRY
POKFULUM.
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55
344
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