HEALTH OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN.

Feilding Star, Volume XV, Issue 3784, 10 May 1919, Page 4

HEALTH OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN.

ROYAL SOCIETY OF N.Z. MEETING OF FEILDING BRANCH. The well attended meethig was held in the Red Cross Rooms "under the auspices of the Feilding branch of the Royal Society for the Health •>i Women and Children. Afternoon tea was handed round by the Committee while the mectinii' was assembling, after which the President, Mrs Phillips, introduced Miss Cook, Secretary of the Mnrfon branch,' who had come with Mrs Alloway, vicepresident at Marlon, to address the meeting. Miss Cook apologised tor the absence of Mrs Sladden, who was unable to he present. The speaker said that the Society had been at work for 12 years, during which time its aetivties had grown until it now 'ia<l 30 head branches, employing over 4/i Plunket"nurses, while many r >ther places were visited at longer or shorter intervals by the nurses. >She outlined the objects of the Society, if which the first and foremost, was to advocate and to promote the natural feeding of infants, through the medium of Plunke.t nurses, correspondence, lectures, etc. She explained that the Society existed as n League for mutual helpfulness and not for charity in any sense. The lurses' services were free, because the Society aieel-at educating the public and not at curing eick babies. there was.a vast amount of iil-healTli .uid unfitness amongst them that would never have come about if all women understood thoroughly anil jcientifically the needs oi : babies. Ordinary education taught, nothing ot this, and yet it must be taught if i the nation was to be stopped from further physical deterioration and 1 aiade fit for the great future that lay oefore it. The medical inspection ot schools had revealed the fact that few ■hildren reached school age imininaged. Yet nearly all babies were born healthy. And the medical inspection o.f recruits had shown that nearly half the young men had jroved unlit to serve their country. Much of this unfitness was traced by competent authorities to mistaken handling in infancy and childhood. The speaker showed by means of charts the drop in the infant deatli rate which had taken place since the Society's operations began. She appealed for wider understanding ot the Society's patriotic work, since objection and hostility were always based on misunderstanding. She urged those present to take longer views than was customary in. the ■matter of what constituted suiting >•. baby. Patent foods, if digested a! ill, would often produce a fat baby, bill would never develop a child so as to make him as strong and capable as nature meant him to be. During the first 20 years of a human being's life he was building: for the future all the time, and the only object of the Society was to get the baby reasonably well through his first year.