The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-07-26


 But they do not leave everything to ed ucation. Let baby get very sick and there is a lively time of it. They get hold of that baby if they have to care for the whole family in order to gain the privilege of saving the baby's life. It is not done however, with loud ringing of ambulances. A district doctor or nurse or visitor finds the sick baby. A telephone call from the visitor brings the doctor or nurse to make the diagnosis. Then there is no waiting. The trained nurse gets on the job in the stuffy back tenement; does what she can in the way of emergency relief, helps the mother pack up her clothing, and within half an hour a troll ley car is whisking MT. Baby to a cool crib and perfect diet and medical treat ment at the sea shore Mother goes along, and if there are other children who cannot be left, they go along, too or else are sent to some other summer home or seaside camp. If necessary, a day work CT is sent to the deserted tenement to clean 1t up and do the left over wash; that is this is done as long as there is room at the seaside homes and money in the societies. treasuries to do the work.
 During the recent hot spell in this city. however, cases came in so rapidly that every baby's home was crowded every mothers rest jammed, every children's home ovcrhowing. Money, too, was short. But the charities began to take more than their normal number of people, and one at least. the Children's Aid society, at its health home, began to put them two in crib and two in bed, and then to appeal for more cribs, rather than send them back to certain death in a street temperature of 99 degrees Fahrenheit.
 In some cases this society found 1t necessary to aid six people, mother and five other children, Just to get at that one baby. The mother and children under s went along with baby to the health home. The girls over went to the Children's home at Bath Beach, the boys over went either to the little boys hotel at Valhalla or to the seaside camp at Stamford All this to get that one baby to place where there was pure air and food. And eight sick childrens missions with medical corps and trained nurses are busy all the time hunting out the babies and older children who must go or die."
 The Association for Improving the Con- dition of the Poor this summer has be- come one of the leaders of the breast feeding" campaign, and is using the seem ingly contradictory device of having pure baby milk depots, principally to induce mothers not to use bottle at all if they can help it. If they can't help it, then the milk depots furnish either at a nomi- nal price or without charge, the purest raw milk obtainable, modified to meet the doctors orders and furnished not in a can ordinarily used for beer, but in sterilized nursing bottle ready for the nipple
 The mothers come to get the milk but they don't get it if they can do their own nursing. And all who come are given dem onstrations and plain talks about baby by nurses and volunteer physicians. And the price they pay is that the baby must be brought once week to be weighed and looked over. This gives the medical people chance to detect summer com plaint or malnutrition in many babies, and the cause discovered is commonly that the baby has shared in the family meals as well as the pure milk or that the mother. after getting pure milk, has let it get warm.
 Then there is a bad half hour for some one, and possibly a baby rushed down to Sea Breeze Home. or hurried up to Junior Sea Breeze, on the banks of the East