The Montgomery advertiser., 1908-08-11
FIGHTING DISEASE
POOR IN NEW YORK ARE TAUUhH TAU
 HOW ITO MAKE APPARATUs'
. s..,.arv Crib For q Quarter--E1re- aeas Cooker Which Does Away With The Intense
 Heat.

Nav York. August 9-(Speciall-. ,.A,,srIv,ada vzeapons are being used very effectively this summer ln tno fight which the charitable orsan,1a. tions of this city are waglng asalnss ass disease and death m lhe
 tenement districts
 aha noor cannot purchase ice boxes. shovver baths and other desirable not weather properties which are or Vaiu- abla aid in fighting off disease ana as 10 Ss havond the financial powers or tba cbaritable organizations to furnish such aouipment to all their oene- ficiaries, a novel expedient mas pee" adopted. This consists of demonstIG- ttons hy the charity workers at Wnlcn inc tenement dwellers are shown now to make ice boxes and other home made appliances which answer tneir noderate tenement requirements as well as the more elaborate affairs oo for the prosperous housewife ln an apartment"
 The Association for improving the condition of the poor took the lnitiai step in this instructive campaign, when it placed on exhibition in each or its milk depots home made lce-ooA Mnien can be built for less than twenty cents and will keep a five cent piece or Ice for twenty-four hours. Before taking this step, investigators for the assocla- ton had found that hundreds or bapieS and children in the tenement districts had been made i'll during the first hot spell by drinking milk which had stooo for hours in a warm place and was teeming with bacteria. In many cases lack of ice-boxes was directly respon- sible for the illness of these children.
 Determined to do away with at least one cause of summer sickness among children, the Association then decided to introduce a cheap ice-box into the tenements.. pr. Alfred F. Hess, of the Department of Health. had been experi- menting with a home made ice-box which he had invented himself, and as it had proved to be practical, the As- sociation adopted it.
 This box, which is now in use in hun dreds of Eastside tenements. is made from an ordinary soap box, two tn pails which fit one inside the other and a bucket of sawdust or a package of newspapers. The larger pail is placed inside the box and the inter- vening space packed tightly with either sawdust or newspapers. The smaller pail is then placed inside the big one. All that remains to be done to complete the ice-box is to place a five cent piece of ice in the inner nail fill it half full of water and place a heavy newspaper covered top on the box A bottle of milk placed in the inner pail will remain at a temperature of 50 degrees for twenty-four hours. At such temperature, bacteria cannot multiply. and the milk will remain sweet.
 The eagerness with which poor parents have come to the milk depots of the association to have the making of this home made ice-box explained to them, and the faithfulness with which they have copied 1t in their own homes, show, according to one of the officers of the Association, that the box is filling a longfelt want. More over the nurses in the milk depots state that in the districts where the cheap ice-boxes have been introduced. there are now less cases of stomach trouble among the children than for merly. Before the introduction of the cheap ice-boxes, they found that even when they supplied mothers with the very best kind of modified milk for their babies, 1t either went to waste because there was no place in the hot tenement rooms to keep 1t cool, or that in some cases. mothers driven to desperation, fed their babies milk
 which the heat had spoiled, with the result that the little ones were made seriously Ill.
 A sanitary home made crib costing but a few cents. has also been advised by the Association for the use of tene- ment mothers. This crib, however,
 while cheap enough for the poor. is equally recommended for the mill | lionaire babies, as the hospital staff believes it Is as good a crib as can be made, from the point of view of keeping the baby well. This crib was invented by MT. F. D. Green. of the Association, and was first installed for experimental purposes in the Junior Sea Breeze Hospital Last year the hos pital was equipped with regular iron baby cribs with ordinary mattresses
 It was found that these mattresses, in addition to being warm, were not easily