PLUNKET BABIES

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 152, 30 June 1938, Page 7

PLUNKET BABIES

SYSTEM DEFENDED

TROUBLES LIE WITH

MOTHERS

(By Telegraph—Press Association.)

CHRISTCHURCH, June 29.

Unauthorised use by some mothers of Plunket diets * issued to other mothers was given by Mrs. J. Cracroft Wilson, president of the Christchurch branch of the Plunket Society, as the cause of "those digestive upsets which bring discredit on the society." She was addressing the annual meeting of the branch and mentioned other cases of mothers not carrying out instructions and still calling their children "Plunket babies."

"The unjustifiable attack which has been made on the society makes it more necessary than ever that all our thousands of Plunket workers should be ready in every possible way to uphold the teaching which for 30 years has brought help to the mothers and babies of this country," said Mrs. Cracroft' Wilson. "I am glad to see that the Minister of Health, the Hon. P. Fraser, has spoken of the wonderfully beneficial work of the Plunket Society. It has received world-wide recognition, and it would be regrettable if anything should be done that would detract from its value or lessen confidence in the work or the excellent methods of the society.

"We have sometimes been blamed because our methods are too rigid, not elastic enough," she said. "I think that if people who say that would go to the Plunket rooms they might think that our methods were too elastic. They would see mothers not carrying out the nurses' instructions and yet coming back for weighing and correction of feeding and calling their babies Plunket babies."

Referring to a statement on the achievement of the society by its medical ~'adviser, Dr. E. H. Williams, Mrs. Cp&croft Wilson said that this was npt 'based on hearsay, but on knowledge of thousands of charts and records in all the Plunket rooms in the Dominion.

With regard to mothers taking a diet from another baby's book she said: "Naturally this leads to those digestive upsets which bring discredit on the society, whereas faithful following of Plunket teaching builds up babies who are a pride and a joy in any family. A short time ago Dr. Wyn Irwin, a Lady King scholar, was

instructed to make an exhaustive research into Plunket records, and his report was that infants artificially fed on strict Truby King lines show no defect that can be attributed to faulty feeding."