Milton sterilizing fluid is produced by

Procter & Gamble The Procter & Gamble Company (P&G) is an American multinational consumer goods corporation headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio, founded in 1837 by William Procter and James Gamble. It specializes in a wide range of personal health/consumer hea ...

for sterilization uses. It contains (NaClO) and (NaCl; common salt). is used to sterilise babies' feeding utensils, including baby bottles. It is sold in dissolvable tablets which are then mixed with cold water and placed in a lidded bucket. This method of bottle sterilization is marketed as "The Milton Method". A is isotonic with body fluids. is used for wound management applications; this contains 0.25% (w/v) available

chlorine Chlorine is a chemical element with the Symbol (chemistry), symbol Cl and atomic number 17. The second-lightest of the halogens, it appears between fluorine and bromine in the periodic table and its properties are mostly intermediate betwee ...

and has a . The fluid has been used in

endodontics Endodontics (from the Greek roots ''endo-'' "inside" and ''odont-'' "tooth") is the dental specialty concerned with the study and treatment of the dental pulp. Overview Endodontics encompasses the study (practice) of the basic and clinical ...

, for example to irrigate an infected

root canal A root canal is the naturally occurring anatomic space within the root of a tooth. It consists of the pulp chamber (within the coronal part of the tooth), the main canal(s), and more intricate anatomical branches that may connect the root ...

, although it is not medically licensed for use in the mouth.

History

The product and company began in Britain in 1916 and were named after the poet

John Milton John Milton (9 December 1608 – 8 November 1674) was an English poet and intellectual. His 1667 epic poem '' Paradise Lost'', written in blank verse and including over ten chapters, was written in a time of immense religious flux and political ...

as a "safe" household name. During the

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

the fluid was used on the front to treat burns and skin conditions. In 1947 a widespread outbreak of

gastroenteritis Gastroenteritis, also known as infectious diarrhea and gastro, is an inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract including the stomach and intestine. Symptoms may include diarrhea, vomiting, and abdominal pain. Fever, lack of energy, and dehydra ...

in the UK caused the death of 4,500 children under the age of one. Many of these were in hospitals where the repeated sterilisation of glass baby bottles containing a small residue of milk by boiling them had resulted in invisible deposits of "milk stone"; these provided a medium for the growth of harmful bacteria.{{cn, date=August 2022 This outbreak led to a national objective of finding an alternative to sterilising milk bottles by boiling, and Milton fluid was the

antiseptic An antiseptic (from Greek ἀντί ''anti'', "against" and σηπτικός ''sēptikos'', "putrefactive") is an antimicrobial substance or compound that is applied to living tissue/skin to reduce the possibility of infection, sepsis, or putre ...

advocated by hospitals and government agencies. The cold water method was generally available and simple for all to use, and virtually all mothers adopted this method.

References

Antiseptics Medical hygiene Disinfectants Hygiene