OUR BABIES.

Gisborne Times, Volume XLIX, Issue 4758, 4 January 1918, Page 7

OUR BABIES.

(By “Hygela.'O 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 SCOURGE OF SUMMER

While summer-time is 'delightful to all of us, and its warm days and bright sunshine tempt people into the open air, and thus tend to banish the “colds,” sore throats, and “chest affections” of the damper, . chillier seasons of the year—pvhile this health giving effect of summer on young and old alike is recognised, in every temperate region of the world, it is also round! that summer kills far more babies than any other season of tho year. WHY IS THIS? WHY SHOULD SUMMER NOT BE THE" SAFEST INSTEAD OF THE MOST DANGEROUS TIME OF YEAR FOR ININFANTS ?

The reason is not far to seek. Most babies are fed on liquid food which is speciallv liable to ferment in warm weather. MILK BECOMES INFESTED WITH MICROBES; IN OTHER WORDS, GOES BAD AND BECOMES POISONOUS, more readily than any other food, and if wo are not careful in the selection of a milkman it may ha ve gone,, bad in warm weather before reaching the home. So long as an infant is suckled, and the mother is not only regular, cleanly, and careful in her habits but also gives the baby all his simple primary rights (outing, fresh air, sunlight, exerejse, etc.), there is no safer season than summer. But. however careful the mother may .be as to general hygiene, summer is dangerous, an c ] often fatal, if there is any carelessness in artificial feeding (whether resorted to in the early months or coming in the natural course later on at weaning or afterwards), simply because microbes grow apace in warm weather if milk is not-properly attended to. S UMMER DIARR HOE A.

Why should diarrhoea single out babies and calves, and leave the rest of nurslings more or less exempt from this special curse of summer? In. warm weather, the young of horses, pigs, dogs, cats, and the rest are almost uniformly healthy, while calves •in all directions are victims to

“scouring,” and few Babies escape tin- same scourge under the name of “summer diarrhoea.” WHY DOES NATURE SINGLE OUT CALVES AND BABIES?

Calves are sacrificed because man takes the cow’s milk for himself and feeds the calf out of a bucket. The baby is sacrificed because the mother’s breast is denied to it also and improper food, contaminated with germs, is substituted l for tile pure perfect, blood-warm, living stream direct from the proper source. The important practical question which we have to face at the present is this:

ARE ILL-I-lEALTII AND DIARRHOEA INEVITABLE DURING SUMMER-TIME FOR CALVES AND BABIES WHO CANNOT BE SUCKLED?

CERTAINLY NOT! In both cases the trouble arises not from the mere fact of artificial feeding, but because proper care is not exercised to secure suitable feed and to prevent fermentation. For babies, Humanised Milk supplies by far the nearest approach to the mother’s milk, and if kept cooj arid given according to the directions contained in the instructions issued by the Society, there would be little risk of disease. Even with breast-feeding a baby may suffer from summer diarrhoea, but immediately suitable treatment of such infants, or of those who have been judiciously fed by artificial means, scon brings about recovery m the great majority of cases. Among, babies who have been improperly fed, on the other band, the risk of death from an attack of diarrhoea is very great indeed, and lasting debility is often left where the baby does not actually succumb .

DEATH ROLL OF DIARRHOEA Professor Budin showed that the number of artificially-fed babies who died in Paris per week was. about 20 in winter, but that in mid-summer the deaths rose to almost 260 per week. This is very strikingly shown m a diagram given on page 40 of., the Society’s pamphlet, “What Babiy Needs.” A large poster of the diagram was placarded in many places throughout the Dominion during Baby Week, and must have been studied by large numbers of our readers. • A rise in the death-rate among infants similar to the above occurs in New Zealand during warm weather, varying with the locality and the heat of the particular'summer. Knowing the cause, the disease js one of the most easily: preventable, and tlie mother who allows her baby to succumb during tlie next few months should feel, in nine cases out of ten, that she has her self to blame.. It is not Nature or Providence that inflicts the curse of summer diarrhoea, but TME .MOTHER HERSELF. That this 'is literally and absolutely true will be realised by anyone, consulting the Paris diagram, which shows that over 1.000 babies died in six weeks when the weather was warmest. Amongst breast-fed babies the death-rate for the same period averaged only 10 per week. Tho deaths that did take place in either class were mainly the result of ignorance and carelessness (especially careless feeding of mother and child, tlie use of the long tube-feeder, lack of fresh air and exercise, irregular habits, failure to keep, the breasts and clotlu ing and l covering clean, and use of dummy or comforter for the.baby)During the same three or four fatal summer months scarcely a death from diarrhoea occurcd among the babies whose mothers were availing themselves of rational advice tendered at tho four creches then’ established in Paris on modern lines. About half of these more fortunate babies were suckled, and the rest were bottle-fed with milk supplied at the special “Babies’ Milk Depot.” In the provinces a similar result lias been achieved. Thus Dr. Dufour, tlie, pioneer in Normandy of the rational care of babies, including the use of humanised milk, shows that while tlie death-rate among infants averaged 5.7 for the four principal towns, the death-rote among babies whose mothers attended the depots and got proper advice and food was less than 3 per cent, or in other words, only one-twentieth of the" mortality which took place among- the babies whose mothers persisted,- in going their own way in spite j>f warnings and advice.