HEALTHY INFANTS

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 104, 29 October 1925, Page 11

HEALTHY INFANTS

SIR TRUBY KING'S CRITICISM

NARROWNESS ©F THE MEDICAL MAN'S VIEW.

"Never in the history of Australia was there more,attention given to the rearing of profit-producing animals than .there is at present; and that.is all the more reason'why, more attention should be given to the rearing of healthy human beings, even taking the matter'purely from the financial aspect." This statement was strongly ■emphasised by Sir Truby King, director, of child welfare in New Zealand, in a luncheon-hour address at the Millions Club in Sydney recently, reports the "Sydney Morning Herald." Sir Albert Gould presided.

Sir/Trubj" King mentijiied that the estimated economic value of an adult man or woman at the present time was-from £750 to £1000. What the dairy farmer had to guard against was the cow that did not keep herself. In the same, way the nation had to, or should, provide against the citizen who would be in tho future a parasite on the rest of the community. Many -thousands of lit people had to be employed at the expense of the State in looking after people who were mentally or physically unfit. The millions thus spent annually in Australia might be saved if proper attention was paid to the rearing of children. There was not now the least doubt that infantile mortality was largely duo to the malnutrition of children in their tender years owing to unsuitable food being provided for them by their mothers through ignorance of the real requirements of their children. It was unfortunately true that in Australia . doctors differed in regard to child welfare, though that was the one subject above all others on which-.there should be a united medical opinion. There was a standard method of bringing up all farm animals, and it was accepted by ex-. ports without question. Tho same should be true in regard to the bringing up of infants. He said.frankly that he was at a loss to understand the narrowness of the views of medical men in Australia on this subject, and ho urged tho business men of the Commonwealth to take tho matter up from the economic aspect.

Sir Trilby King said there was a strange irony in the fact that while children, from the beginning ,to the end of school life, were kept in houses with glass windows, which stopped the passage of the ultra-vio-let rays—now proved to be essential for stimulating-nutrition, growth development, spirit, and mentality—-tho authorities responsible for the health and vitality of the monkeys at tie London Zoo had recently gone to tho expense- of installing special appara tvs for providing them witli a supplementary supply of ultra-violet rays, in order to overcome the insufficiency of winter sunshine in the clear space if Regent Park. This afforded an additional argument for open-air schools. Sir Tniby King said that ha had asked the people of New Zetland whether they were tending already to forget the most important of all revelations of the war; were parents m general as anxious as they shonirl lo about ensuring the bodily health and efficiency of tlieir children, or wore I hey still far more interested in their children distinguishing themselves at examinations and passing exnmino. lions? It was distressing to read the scathing reports regarding the unjustifiably large proportion of malnourished, Hut-chested, undersized children attending schools, and the scant attention paid in many cases by their parents or guardians to such simple "ssontials as plain, wholesome, regular meals, pure air, exercise, rcst^atd sleep.