OUR BABIES.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 3297, 16 August 1911, Page 7

OUR BABIES.

KEEPING BABY SLEEPING IN BED BESIDE MOTHER: Last week I -wrote strongly on this offence, in connection with tlie doing to death of two babies , in one month in Dunedin by overlying. At the same time I referred to the even greater wrong inflicted in the aggregate on the very large number of babies who, though not killed outright, are injured for life by lying at night in the vaporous, muggy, used-up poisoned air beside their mothers. THE OCEAN OF AIR. Do people realise the ocean of air as they do the ocean of water? 1 am perfectly certain they do not, though air is just as real is more immediately important to ‘us. A fish liv- , ing at the bottom of the ocean of water and never coming to the surface, would not realise that water was anything at all. It might say to itself, “I know there is nothing between me and that rock yonder, because I can see through and swim through the intervening space; it is merely empty space.” If the fish were once to go to the surface and thrust its head up into the much thinner air, it -would grasp the fact that water was 1 a/ very real Substance, but it would now imagine that in reaching the top of its ocean it had come indeed to. mere, emptiness. The fish Would not realise that it had only reached the bottom of another ocean—the great ocean of air. which covers the whole world for a mile deep. Human beings are in much the same position as the deep-water fish: never having gone up to the top of their ocean, they do not really understand that air is anything—that it is real matter—real and substantial. How many people truly apprehend, for instance, that every living thing in the world is built mainly out of air and water, and that in its. immediate relations to human existence and vitality, air is by far the most important food.

Without air we die in 3 or 4 minutes. Without water we die. in 3 or 4 days.

Without ordinary food we die in 3 or 4 weeks.

It is amazing; that we should voluntarily subject our children or ourselves to the-devitalising influence of used-up poisoned air for five hundred minutes every night, when we know that tlie complete withdrawal of air for only a few- m.in'utos will stamp out life for ever. Children habitually deprived of pure fres'h air grow up soft, pale and feeble in body and mind compared with those reared in the open air, and they fall ill and succumb to disease much more readiiv than those who are brought up ruddy, healthy and hardy. Every particle of vegetation, every herb and tree every fruit and flower, every block of coal, every drop of oil is esenitially built out of the .air, not out of the solid land, as so many people still imagine; and back to the atmosphere they return sooner or later. We all know this in one sense, but we signally fail to grasp it in another. We learn it as a kind of shibboleth; but how manv of us put this knowledge to practical use in our own lives or in the rearing of our families When will our people understand that an abundant supply of pure coal air day and night— God’s bounty to all, , rich and poor alike —is one of the greatest privileges and blessings of existence.: a gracious gift that would be regarded as even more worth struggling and paying for than good food, but for the fact that- it is invisible, intangible, free and therefore unappreciated and unaccented

PURE AIR AND CONSUMPTION. Doctors now force pure air on their most delicate patients—viz., on consumptives, who have coddled themselves until they have become so feeble and liable to catch cold that thev have feared every change of the weather and every risk of trifling dampness or draught and have ceased to venture cut into cool air unless muffled up ond breathing through respirators. Doctors are convincing such people that their only chance of life lies in availing themselves of the purest of pure air, and nothing is more striking than Ihe amazing change often wrought by a few. months’ sojourn in an open-air sanatorium, which may be up among the snow ond ice of some mountainous health resort such as Davos Platz in Switzerland. I remember reading some years ago tlie expressions of naive surprise by ,a well-known London physician,>oif first seeing consumptives reclining in the evening at Davos in openair balconies, comfortably reading under the oold glare of electric lights, with the temperature below freezing point. If such people come to revel in fresh air. and say they “can’t catch cold” when suitably clad, what about the healthy ? People ought to _be ashamed to say. “I can’t stand having my windows and doors wide open at night,” with free ingress for outside air unobstructed by blinds Everyone can stand fresh air; no one can withstand the devitalising effects of impure, stuffy. bedroom air. , We do not advise rushing straight from the one extreme to the other, but, given a few weeks, practically everyone can be habituated to sleeping in perfectly fresh, cool air. and few who have deliberately tried and experienced tlie difference would “return to their .vomit.” In using this expression. I "am" scarcely speaking metaphorically. Dr Hillier says:

Someone has described breathed air which is saturated with respiratory refuse and impurity, as containing AIR-SEWAGE. .. . Experiments show that the lungs exhale in the breath vapoufs charged with poison. Similar waste products are given off the faeces, the urine, and the sweat. We do not drink and re-absorb tlie poisons eliminated by the kidneys or the skin. “Why,” asks Daremburg, “should we re-absorb poisons exhaled from the lungs, by breathing an air already breathed?” (From “Tuberculosis: Its Nature, Prevention, and Treatment,” by Alfred Hillier, 8.A., M.D., C.M.) HOW TO SET TO WORK.

How to- set about to ventilate rooms, and ensure- pure air for the- whole family, is thoroughly gone- into in a- practical way by moans of numerous diagrams and illustrations in the Society’s hook, “The Feeding and Care of Baby _(see page 55 and onwards). If applied to, the -Plunkett Nurse will visit any home and explain just what to do and how todo it, in a simple practical way, even in the poorest .and tiniest town cottage or tenement. , ... The general outside air of our cities is pure enough, if our people would only avail themselves of it. Impurity arises from keeping air bottled in the - house (instead of flowing, through it), breathing- it over and over again, and tuns loading it up with sewage from the lungs. Surely this practice is as disgusting as it is injurious, and should be regarded with scorn and contempt bv every clea-mly. right-living man or woman. The higher fishes instinctively shun polluted water. Why shou’d we be less particular in regard to air t