HEALTH OF THE PEOPLE.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume II, Issue 187, 23 July 1912, Page 6

HEALTH OF THE PEOPLE.

DR. TRUBY KING'S ADDRESS. I sound ; ADVICE. A LARGE ATTENDANCE. Dr. Truby Kitiji was wekonieii at St. Matthew's Schoolroom yesterday by a large attendance of women, and his intel esting address held the attention of his aiidic-nee from start to finish, His Moi ship the Mayor in introducing Dr. King, spoke. eulogist ically of the invaluable service he had been to the Dominion in his work on behalf ot the health of women and children. The lecturer said that speaking to a meeting of women it was perhaps a little embarrassing to have to refer mainly to diagrams ami to quote figures and statistics, because v. o men were always rather inclined io lie anxious about anything whicn was calhd scientific, under the idea that sch nee meant what was dry, impractical. complicated, ami dilheult to understand. In reality just tm reverse should be the ease. As Miss Huxley said, referring t<> the views of her father. Professor Huxley, he always insisted that tire object of reicnee was to simplify things and lender them more practical, not io complicate them. In fact, science was just systematized common sense, and there was needed lor the understanding of sclent iiie nmtteis no faculty or qualification which we d:d not all possess. In the ordinary affairs; <.f lite i. was really a good saving of time, m the long rim. to be accurate ami definite rather than do tilings in a •dip shod, unnit-thmiieal wav : pe> y.would find that guessing gave much more trouble than acting on knowledge derived from experience.

Dr. King then asked the audien ■>. to picture to itself what would ,>e our position now. if we existed al till, but for the woik doim by sc’.en ■■ in the course of the last 100 years. Take any walk of life. In the earl; Victorian era Adams, of Cambridge, and Leverrier, in t ranee, hail simu! tanectisly come to the conclusion that there was a star invisible to the naked eye some 3JWJW.IW mile.away and nearly IWj times as big . s our earth, which was interfering with the rate of movement of the p’anei Uranus. Each mapped out the position where the unknown planet would be found, ami where it wmfound subsequently by means ol powerful telescopes found within degree or so of the spot in span;' which they had indicated. This wa.-> the planet Neptune, distant from i - some 3,000,000 times the whole length of New Zealand.

To go from the infinitely great to the infinitely little in matter,’ m the middle of the latter part of the Victorian era, it nas observed Lx chemists —the men who deal wren the properties and behavior <f particles of mallei that neither are nor ever will be visible to us i-y means of the most poACitul microscopes—that there vvc-ie certain relationships in tl.e piopeities of the 80 or so elements of which the matter of our world is made up. Saj. the weights of the ultimate atoms varied from one to 100, the properties and affinities did not run in that order, but in octaves, analogous to the octaves of music. Such at least was the theory propounded by Xewlands ami elaborated by Mendeleef. Mendeleef went further. He announced what he called the periodic law and drew up a table showing ah the then known elements in the i erders and sequence of properties. But three wire missing’. It was m. if three notes of music had been letr out. “But," he said, “these three notes must exist, only we have no. found them." He described two sunHtances accurately, but scarcely dared to hope that they would he dis covered in his lifetime. They were discovered, ami proved to be just as he prophesied. One was found m tin* mountains of Scandanavi.t, Scandium ; another in the Pyrennes, Gallium (in honour of Erance) ; arm the third in the mines of Germany, (lermanium. It had been well said that yam would believe in astrology if a professed astrologer told you accurately years ahead that you would nn-et three persons under given conditions, and told you all about them, their weight, 1 their height, the colour of their eyes and hair and the nature of their minds and personalities. Astrology cannot do these things, and therefore we do not believe in it, but chemistry can do what is parallel. Within certain limits it can truly prophesy and predict the hitherto unknown. What do we not owe to the science of physics and sciences and chemistry now-a-days. How much narrower would our lives ami resources be had we no true knowledge of steam and its properties, no steamers, no railways, no knowledge of electricity, no applications of electrical power, no electric light, telegraphs or telephones, and no motor cars.

Jsi.it to bring the matter of what we owe to science more immediately down to New Zealand, in particular where should we be to-day but tor the scientific development of the power of practically establishing conditions of extreme cold and our application of that power to the freezing of mutton.. Where should we be bat for the development of scientific dairying, both in regard io blitter and cheese. Nobody dreamed nowadays of calling such things fads, yet in the beginning the practical farmer laughed to scorn the idea that anything would ever come of these inlerfercnecs with the practical work of practical people. He never dreamed that anything coni' over take the place of the traditional slipshod ways of makmg butler and

c-Hresc. The same thing applied all through in regard to farming. In the near future no one would succeed in farming who did not atail himself of scientific cultivation ano manunng and the application of one accumulating scientific knowledge i” re ’ gard to the laws of breeding. The men who were succeeding best were t | r t; .m who were availing them seh'.s of i) knowledge. The others were failing behind and must fall < ver farther and farther behind in the struggle and competition of modern life.

What struck him as most extraordinary was the fact that while the rich store of knowledge garnered in the last 100 years had been applied to regulating and improving the structure and lines of plants and animals useful to man, he was only now beginning in any serious way to apply to himself and his own oil spring what had proved so beneficent in all other directions.

The lecturer then went on to de- ( monstrate the practical advocation! of our knowledge regarding the com-i position and chemistry ut foods as applied to the rearing of children,! showing, for instance, that in every ease of milk of each creature was i specially made and adapted to serve , the needs of the particular species. ! j The main purpose of the fat in milk: I was to maintain the body tempera- j I lure. In mammals living in the air; | the proportion of fat was 14 per | I cent., but that in the case of mam-' Imais living in cold water, such as i the whale, the proportion was 50 per] cent., because in the latter case the! loss of heat was 10 or 15 times as I rapid. _ I Turning to the fiesh forming! material, he showed that in the case of the human being the proportion j in the milk was about 1 per cent., in th? case of the cow 3 or 4 per cent., and in the case of the rabbit over 10 per cent. The quantity present in the milk was proportionate to the i growth of the individual—the baby doubling its weight in 6 months, the calf growing three times as quickly, and the rabbit doubling its weight in a week. These allowances were rot accidental ; they were obviously natural and necessary.' Would anyone with such knowledge think of giving a baby either whale’s milk or rabbit’s milk merely because it was a white fluid superficially resembling human milk. But it was only one stage less absurd to give unmodified cows milk, because the flesh-forming material was not only excessive in quantity but vviung in quality. A crude curd was adapted for the calf winch had special organs to digest it and which would soon have to cope with rough herbage and hay. There was no e.xcuse for using patent foods which consisted for the most part of baked flour on the one hand or dried milk on the other. It was tiie fad and fashion of the moment with many mothers to give their badies a much advertised brand of dried cows' milk, which it was professed, v. as specially modified so as to make it similar in composition to human milk. Nothing of the kind had been done. There was no patent food on the market which corresponded to human milk in composition or properties. By far the nearest adaptation was what every mother could readily arrive at in her own home with a minimum of trouble. V) hat was called humanised milk was simply cows’ milk adapted as closely as possible to the composition laid down by nature for the child, and a very great advantage of this where a child could not be fed naturally, was the fact that it was perfectly easy to alter the proportions of any of the three constituents of milk, sugar, fat or protoid, according to the digestive or assimilative power of the particular child. All these things were readily' learned in practice from the Blanket Nurse. No such facilities existed in the case of patent foods.

Dr. King insisted very strongly on no effort being spared on the mother’s part to nurture the child herself, saying that she should not give in merely because her milk disagreed with the child, but should make every effort to so establish her own health by outdoor exercise, etc., as to rectify the composition, of the milk. She should do everything possible in the direction of rational and regular feeding, besides weighing the child before and after feeding, where necessary, in order’ to ascertain precisely what it was really getting, and thus prevent over or under feeding. The need for fresh air, outings, etc, were touched on. Finally the lecturer pointed out how much harm was done to young children by sending them to school too soon. He said that the medical profession was strongly of the opinion that children should not go to school before seven years of age, because it had been conclusively shown that too early schooling interfered with growth and development. It was found that the delicate children who were kept from school in Germany between six and seven years of age, grew 20 per cent, more in weight than the strong children who went to school during tnu. »«me year. In the case of girls growth was almost arrested during the first year of too early school life. In the ease of children under nine years of age. schooling should be restricted to the morning, three hours was ample, am! even, then they should be cleared out of school every threequarters of an hour for a ten minutes' scamper, this being especially necessary in our over-crowded infant schools. It was pointed oat that over-pressure should cease especially in the case of girls, that far more attention should be paid to the playgrounds, recreation and bodily development, ami that the interests ;of domesticity, and home life and love of children should receive far more attention in connection with education. Further eliinentary physiology should be taught to both boys and girls.