OUR BABIES.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VIII, Issue 666, 6 May 1914, Page 7

OUR BABIES.

Published under the auspices of the 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 DESTINY OF THE BABY. "■ The natural and proper destiny of every bay is, of course, to grow up strong and well to normal manhood or womanhood, and it was this destiny that the founders of the great Moscow Foundling Hopsital had in view when they started tho institution. No human imagination could have conceived that only fivo in 100 were to attain to perfect manhood or womanhood. One question whether any humanitarian project ever failed more completely than the Russian scheme for improving the lot of its foundlings. BY ORDER OF THE CZAR.

To quota from the article, entitled 'God's Rake":— "Peter the Great wa3 considered a great civiliser when he issued a decree ordering the Church to institute hospitals at the Church noundaries: and to circulate- the ukass that foundlings should be handed over to these institutions." Since then many Czais and Czarinas have fought the problem. Peter's widow, Catherine the First, and his daughter, Elizabeth, built several foundling hospitals; and Catherine the Great built the vast. Moscow Hospital. She issued a decree saying that the 'dom' was 'for the good education of innocent children.' It was to be a model institution 'to save many thcuands of lives.' The male foundlings, when they attained manhcod, were to marry serf girl?, who. by virtue of the marriage, were at once to bo set free. This pices intention was frustrated by the fact that mors than half the babies, male and female, died before they were twelpo months old; that not one in ten reached ihe age of ten; and that not one in twenty reached an old enough age to marry, and liberate a serf girl."

The practical bearing of the above and of what hns appeared in the last few articles may be summed up in the words: —Pure, cool air, exercise, regularity, and rational feeding for the baby, warm, muggy, used-up air, passivity, and carelessness as to food and feeding. The fact of having emphasised these points makes it easier for me to anwser the following letter

WINTER AND THE BABY

A mother writes from Central Otago sniying that she notices that great stress is awlays laid on the risks that babies run in summer, and inquiring whether there are no dangers which should be specially guarded against in winter. She says:—' I quite understand that babies run more riks of diarrhoea than from any ; other cause in the first year of life; but I have got over the summer all . right. In epite of having had to feed ray bahy artificially with humanised milk for the last few month, I have managd to keep her well and strong. She is now eight months old, and weighs just over eighteen pounds, and though a little fretful, owing, I think, to cutting two teeth, she gives us no anxiety. All I want to know is, Can you suggest anything to guard againt the risks of winter on the same lines as the warnings you give' about the special risks of summer.?" REPLY. Special Riak3 of Winter. Unquestionably the special risks the baby runs in the colder months of the year are risks not dua to cold, but to what 13 called "catching cold," which is quite another matter. The way to prevent a bahy "catching cold" or getting sora throat, croup, bronchitis, broncho pneumonia, pneumonia, pleurisy, cr, indeed, any trouble connected with the breathing organs, is to reßr the child form the beginning as a "fresh-air baby." By a "fresh-air baby" I mean one who is never kept coddled in a warm, stuffy room, and who, therefore, is subjected to no severe strain when taken out into the pure, fresh air of tho coldest day. Of course, the mother must safeguard her child by clothing it properly whether it is to be carried in her arms, put in a perambulator, or laid in its cradle. Half the coughs and colds of infancy would be prevented if mothers would master the simple method of making tho baDy's bed described and illustrated on pages 85 and IGO of the Society's book, "Feeding and Care of Baby." In conclusion, I cannot do better than refer the mother to the opening page of the book. PURE AIR AND SUNSHINE. God lent His creatures light and air And water open to the skies; Man locks him in a stifling lair And wonders why his brother dies. —Dr Oliver Wendell Holmes, ' Babies pine and die because they are irregulaily and wrongly fed, and kept indoors in warm, stuffy rooms instead of living outside in the open air and sunlight by day, and in pure, cool, fresh, gently-flowing air at night. Keep baby out of the direct line of draught; but don't be frightened of the air being cold. Pure, cold air ia invigorating, and prevents "catching cold." Warm, stuffy air is poisonous and devitalising, and makes babies liable to "catch cold" when taken out into the open. There is no danger, but actual safety, in gently-flowing night air.