TINIEST EVER.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 64, 16 March 1936, Page 5

TINIEST EVER.

AMERICAN DOLL BABY. UNDER EIGHT INCHES LONG. TIGHT TO SAVE LIFE. (From Our Own Correspondent.) SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 12. Tinier than a child's doll, the world's! smallest baby—sixteen ounces at birtli— blinked its beady, blue eyes in the city of Oakland, and decided the world is a pretty big place. Every device known to modern medical science was put to use in a desperate fight to save the onepound baby's life.

Nurses at the Peralta Hospital, where the baby was born prematurely, said the child had "an, excellent chance" to survive, with every vital organ functioning perfectly. The "puppet" babe, a girl, was born to Mrs. Anne Vogt, a registered nurse, of 10G3 Alcatraz Avenue, Oakland, and on "eye dropper'* rations of fresh mother's milk and under the care of Lucille Wilson Church, a nurse specialising in the care of premature babies, the tiny girl was kept in an incubator maintained at a constant 100 degrees temperature.

The child was normal in every respect but size—heart, lungs and other organs being in perfect proportion., It was stated the infant would be kept in the incubator for several months, or until it reached a weight of about six 'pounds, when it would have passed the perilous undersize stage.

The baby's father is Paul -Vogt, a patient in the Veterans' Hospital at Bakersfleld, in Central California.

At birth Baby Anne was less than eight inches in length. Her head was the size of an average orange, and her mother's wedding ring could almost be used by the baby as a bracelet. The baby was bathed in vegetable oil and was fed with diluted mother's milk with equal parts of a five per cent solution of lactose. Fresh mother's milk was used when available. Otherwise tinned mother's

milk was used. Feedings were at one hour intervals, and thirty drops of the milk and lactose were given at a feeding.

When the news was carried to the father 150 miles away to liis hospital in Bakersfield, he said: "I am delighted. I feel as though I could go out and lick the world. Gee, I must get well soon and get back to work to help my wife and the girl."