OUR BABIES

Dominion, Volume 16, Issue 148, 10 March 1923, Page 14

OUR BABIES

(By "Hygeia.’) Published under the auspices of the Royal New Zealand Society for the Health of Women and Children. “It is wiser to put up a fence at the top of a precipice than to maintain an ambulance at the bottom.” The. following article has been sent, by Miss J. B. N. Paterson, who assisted Dr. Truby King in the recent. Health Campaign throughout tho Dominion :— AT WARSAW. The sun poured into the classroom of the University at Warsaw on the upturned faces of the listening students. They were intent, this lecturer caught their attention —and held it; what was he saying now, this military-looking professor/ “Students, cast your eyes on this gold signet ring and compare it with the brass knob of the window —the sun is shi» ; ng on both. V 'I, apparently their vj'.ue is intrinsic.)., ly the same, but really it is poles asunder —so great, I would have you remember, is the difference between mother’s milk and cow’s milk as far as baby is concerned. Professor Michaelowicz proceeded-. “The same fluid which has nourished the child for nine months lefore birth will nourish him (and was intended to nourish him) for nine months after birth—it is only the colour of the fluid which has changed.” BREAST-FEEDING VERSUS BOTTLE-FEEDING. Dr. Truby King was told by the medical chief of the Children’s Hospital in Warsaw that, owing to the shortage of cow’s milk, bottles, and teats, even the highest in the land had to return to the “natural” way of feeding their infants, with the following result—the breast-fed children withstood tho ravages of wax till their third year, while artificially-fed children succumbed much earlier. NUTRITION. Remember that nutrition ia the crux of the whole matter, and nutrition is not limited to feeding alone, but includes food, air hygiene, clothing, and environment. Tho cells of the infant’s body are growing daik—or should be if properly treated. What they lose this week cannot be made Up next: any illness or check leaves sis mark —as one sees on naijs after a severe Illness, or on the wool of sheep after a period of drought, when it was impossible for the animals to get enough food to nourish them. MEASLES, ETC. One still hears so-called educated people, who forget we are living in the age of preventive medicine, saying that “so and so has measles or scarlet fever, but that the sooner the mother gets the family over these childish ailments the sooner she is free.’" What nonsense' Some even go the length of suggesting that, if one child takes measles or chicken-pox, the proper thing to do is to run the others into the same room in the hope that tney will catch it, and so they will get it all oyer at once. Sometimes it is got over sooner than the adviser

anticipated, and a little cross m the graveyard is all that is left to remind one of the crime against childhovd. CHILDREN FROM INFECTED HOMES. There aro parents who evade the Health Laws and permit their children to go to school and risk infecting others while their brother or sister lies sick at homo; hut, “it’s only measles”! How many are the defects measles leaves 1 Albthers, when will you realise that measles is not a childish ailment, it is not part of the child’s evolution, liko teething ? If the nutrition of the child were all it should be, and the schools all they should be, and the neighbours honest about keeping children, from school 1 whenever any suspicious disorder arose at home, then measles would be stamped out; but even now—if the resistive power of the child i» what it should be —ho will be able to withstand the onslaugfht of the measle microbe. It is a question of the survival of the fittest—the babe or the microbe—the British army or the German army. A well-nourished, properlyfed child has a high resistive power, and can withstand the microbes which assail him. THE TEETH. The first teeth are completed out of the mother’s blood before the child is born —therefore it is of vital importance that the expectant mother should attend to hygienic habits, out-door exercise, cold bathing, and proper diet; a pure blood supply depends on a combinjition of the foregoing essentials. ■ The first teeth should not decay. Tho second teeth should bo built mainly out of the mother’s milk, and must "be so built as to last not for 20 or 30 years only, but for life.

Tho address of the Plunket Society’s Rooms in Wellington is 18 Kent Terrace. Hours of attendance, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. week days; 10 a.m. to noon Saturdays. Nurses’ services free to all. Communications to the secretary (Aliss Ward); telephone 21—931.