OUR BABIES

Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 300, 13 September 1921, Page 2

OUR BABIES

(By •'Hygeia.'') Published under the auspices of the Royftl New Zealand Society for the Health of Women and Children. “It is wißer to put up a fence at the top of a precipice than to maintain an ambulance at the bottom." WAR AND THE FAMILY. If one were to the man in the street the simple question: “In the history of the world, who has borne the main brunt of war’’ —ten to one he would sav with mild eurnrise: "Why, the men who have done tho fighting., of course—tho soldiers and the sailors." Q. Fighting what? A. The enemy, nf course. Q. What enemy? A. Yeeterday, the Germans; to-morrow, who knows? In reality the sacrifice of women and children, due to war and its aftermath, has always proved greater, ip the long' run, than the sacrifice of the actual combatanls; and the killing and • maiming of both friend and foe, combatants a-na non-combatants, has always been mainly the work of privation, malnutrition, disease. and microbes not of man himself. This war may prove an exception, but the present situation in Russia,. Central Europe, and the Near East points to the old conclusion. An interesting discussion of these an « other problems of war is to be found in Dr. Woods Hutchinson's "The Doctor in War," published about tho time of the armistice, when matters looked far brighter as regards ultimate results than they do to-day—especially as affecting the fate of women and children. The following extracts may be given,* not merely aq interesting, but also because of their practical bearings on the means of maintaining health and ward-| ing off disease among ourselves Tho Sacrifice of Women and Children. "War. like life, ia full of contradictions Aiming solely at the destruction of enemy* life by its own legitimate and special weapons, it actually destroys five times as many soldiers by disease as in battle, and while waged solely between armed men its heaviest slaughter has always .been among women and children. "When a soldier bravely enlists for the defence of his country he thinks only of facing the risks of battle and sudden death, but until this war his far greatest risk was of dying of typhoid cholera in a summer camp, or of pneumonia in a winter one. The doctor' has made this world-struggle probably ona of the least deadly ever fought in proportion to the numbers engaged.

’• The Army Camp. "An army camp used to be a hotbed of epidemics, a breeding-,place of lences. The soldier’s worst enemy enlists with him; for what killed most men in war was not bullets but “bugs,’’ not the sword but the microbes. Whenever you mobilise and call to the colours a thousand men, you call at least twenty bulion tubercele bacilli, ton bi’lion, typhoid, five billion pneumonia, and a couple of million dysentery germs. "An ai’my assembles literally primed and loaded for trouble-from the inside. "The first thing an army m the field does is to foul its own water supply, and the second is to'infect its iood by swarms of flies bred in its garbage dumps and manure heaps , . , , "In the old days armies simply rotted , with disease in their winter Quarters. "In this war, our armies In .Flanders and Northern France in the winter of 1917-18, out in open trenches in some oi the vilest and ‘sickliest’ weather troops ever had to face, had less sickness and fewer deaths from pneumonia and all other diseases than soldiers used to have in barracks in time of peace, apd far less than the general civil population at home. . , . “Inoculation protected them against typhoid- splendid feeding, with plenty of meat and fat, against pneumonia. and consumption; fly-campaigns against dysentery and diarrohea; shower-baths and clean underwear, against spotted typhus, and quarantine against measles, summer diarrhoea, diphtheria, and influenza. '“.The old plagues of army camps-cho-lera Black Death, and-spotted typhusall lifted their heads and began to resurreal’ in Italy, m Serbia, and ih Russia, but all were promptlv stamped out by modern sanitary science—cholera bv isolation, disinfection, and vaccine, Black Dealh by the extermination of fleas, t>Phus by measures directed against lice and bv shower-baths There is no armour / against Fate, but when it comes to typhus a clean Undershirt pretty well fills the bill, and is a better life-protector than any shirt of mdil.”

Dcadliness of Former Wars. ■ “As an illustration of the real dcadliness of true perils o£ former wars may be cited the famous Thirty Yea lB , W ar (1613-1648). It is estimated that during this fierce and bloody strn'o, ranged from the Mediterranean to the Baltic for a full generation, the population of Central Europe was reduced from nearly 30,000,000 to less than 13,000,C00. m the whole of this time only about fiftj important battles were fought, whose total losses in killed aud wounded amounted to less than half a million. All the other sixteen millions died ot disease and famine and pestilence." Diarrhoea and Dysentery.

“After tvphoid the two next deadliest and most serious camp aiscases, diarrhoea and dysentery, have been kept under by / scrupulous watchfulness, over the water supply, which, in many areas has been . brought in pipes from streams or reservoirs many miles distant, or sand-beds, or, where this was impossible, disinfected bv doeing with chlorine in tn© fo?£ of bleaching powder ThisMs a worn detful protection and safeguard, as in quite moderate amounts it will destroy all germs of infection that may hay got mto ß ?he water-those of diarrhoea, dysentery typhoid, ana choiera—while a.„ the same time it is quite harmless to the hum“i stomach, and, if given sufficient timfr to neutralise and settle, leaves no unpleasant tasto behind.

Warfare Against the Fly. “The chief weapon against diarrhoea and dysentery is relentless against that insufferable little pest and currier of pestilences, .tho fly. His beat is of the simplest— visiting the latrines aud loading up with the germs of ‘bsentery, diarrhoea., cr typhoid; fly. l ”* XL"® ten's and mess kitchens and distributing them broadcast over the fObd., both on. the table aud in the larders aud kitchens, ““'tathtewlr'no mercy has been shown him" ho has been cut off from his supnlios of infections by burning in mein. 'eraUtrs ail human and other camp wastes. He has been shut out of the dining rooms and kitchens to- screens or WinHows Ho has been trapped in a thousand ingenious ways, irom sticky strings Jnrt strtaß and papers to big box-traps. Last aud deadliest of all, it has beenl enrived of any possible place to lay e EB B and breed by burning or carting out to the land all manure heaps, has'tb iB warfare been that many cf our army camps by constant- vigilance have become almost; fly-. Irhp towns ’ and some of the most com-p-ete triumphs of this sort have been won on the Italian front with its sub tropical climate."

MEMO. BY HYGEIA This practical lesson of the war ell °“.d be borne in mind by everyone, in town or country. Nothing is more important tlr-m preventing tiie accumulation oi gar ■ tawe of any kind in the vicinity of the home, especially in' summer time. Rot tinir organic matter always teems tyltn Sobel, and this is ivhy a dry summer in liable to be so deadly, lue viua which is the great purifier if is kept clean round, about the nouse and in our streets— may become deadlie than the fly as a carrier of the of disease and deatn m dry, du y "itamember'that summer is H "‘l that the main danger for youl and jours is round about your own premises Have u snring-cleaninc outside as well as in Bidothf house. I)o it now and don t Jet anything that cun go bad and cause K’ge tin does gToat virtorr over the B W o tt t r th\ aS do b treatment and handling of wounds