DUR BABIES.

Manawatu Standard, Volume 9184, Issue 9184, 7 April 1910, Page 7

DUR BABIES.

BY riVGEIA. 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." PLUNKET NURSES' SERVICES FREE. ADDRESSES OF PLUNKET NURSES AND SECRETARIES. Dunedin. —Plunket Nurses Mrs Matheson and Miss Ellis. Office of the Society, Health Department Rooms, Liverpool street, Dunedin. Office hours, Monday, Thursday and Saturday, from 2 to 3 p.m. Tel. 1136. Hon. sec., Mrs Carr, 8 Heriot row, Tel. 1774. Cliristchurch. —Plunket Nurses Morgan and Macarthy. Office of the Society, 27 Durham street South. Tel. 940. Office hours, 2 to 3 p.m. daily, except Saturdays and Sundays. Hon. sec., Mrs F. H. Pyne, Bealey avenue. Tel. 285. Wellington.—Plunket Nurse M'Donald, 73 Aro street. Tel. 2425. Hon. 6ec., Mrs M'Vicar, 45 Marjoribanks 6treet, City. Tel. 2642. Auckland. —Plunket Nurse Chappell, Park street. Tel. 851. Office of the Society, 2 Chancery street. Tel. 829. Office hours, Tuesdays and Fridays, 2.20 to 4 p.m. Hon. sec., Mrs W. H. Parkcs, Marinoto, Symonds street. Tel. 240. Palmerston North. —Plunket Nurse Henderson, care of W. Park, bookseller, The Square. Tel. 20. Hours, 3 to 4 p.m. daily. Hon. sec., Mrs Jas. Young, College street. Napier.—Plunket Nurse Donald, Masonic Hotel. Tel. 87. Hon. sec.. Mrs E. A. W. Henley, P.O. Box 64. Tel. 147. New Plymouth.—Plunket Nurse Warnock, Criterion Hotel. Hon. 6ec., Mrs R. J. Matthews. Timaru. —Plunket Nurse Bowman. Office of the Society, Arcade Chambers. Tel. 314. Office hours, 3.30 to 4.30 and 6.30 to 7.30. Hon. sec., Mrs Smithson, Faillie, Sefton street. Tel. 230. Society's Baby Hospital, Karitane Home, Anderson's Bay, Dunediij. Tel. 1985. Demonstrations on points of interest to mothers aro given by the matron every Wednesday afternoon from 2.30 to 3.30. All mothers are invited. Messages may bo left at any time at the Plunket Nurses' Offices or private addresses. The Society's official sheet of instructions, written by Dr. Truby King, price 3d (postage free), and all other information available from the hon. secretary of each branch.

HEALTH OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN. The following is the concluding portion of the president's address at the sccond annual conference of the Society for the Promotion of the Health of Women and Children : — THE HIGH IDEALS OF WIFEHOOD. I feel with Mrs Earlo that marriage should not be a woman's only profession, but it should be her highest hope. Every girl should try and malic herself worthy of it both in body and mind, and this attitude will not make a girl grow into, a less sensible old maid if she has to be one. On the contrary, it is, ofooursc, quite obvious to anyone who will look beyond schooldays that the healthy, normal, all-round development, that will make the best of a girl for marriage, will also make her in the long run most fit to earn her own living, and most inclined to earn it in ways that will satisfy her higher nature as a woman, which should crave of all things for lifo in a home, whether her own or another's; or, failing this, for some calling such as nursing, which will satisfy the natural tendency of all good women to offer some sacrifice of herself for others. It is not women alone who feel that too much is being demanded of human nature —of women's nature, especially—in order to carry out the fetish of modern education. As Lafcadia Ilearn says: —

I confess to being one of those who believe that the human heart, oven in the history of a race, may bo worth infinitely more than the human intellect, and that it will sooner or later prove itself infinitely better able to answer all the cruel enigmas of the Sphinx of Life. I still believe that the old Japanese were nearer to the solution of those enigmas than are we, just because they recognised moral beauty than intellectual beauty. And, by way of conclusion, I may venture to quote from an article on education by Ferdinand Brunstiere: "All our educational measures will prove vain if there bo rio effort to force into the mind, and to deeply impress upon it, the sense of those fine words of Lamenncus: 'Human society is based upon mutual giving, or upon the sacrifice of man for man, or of each man for all other men ; and sacrifice is the very essence of all true socicty.' " In these days of falling population the State should surely give every encouragement to any earnest practical movement coming spontaneously from the hearts of its women which tends to exalt motherhood and incline girls to home life and home interests, while, at the same time, affording skilled help and practical advico to parents with regard to babyhood. This certainly is the spirit of a book on motherhood just published, with an introduction by Sir Thomas Laudor Brunton, LL.D., M.D., F.R.S. (president of the last congress on school hygiene).

Sir Laudor Brunton says: — The keynote of this volume is a pica for the training of woman. Numbers of women marry regardless of the fact that their training has been hopelessly inadequate to enable them to perform the high ideals of wifehood and the sacred duties of motherhood . . . . Home is a woman's fortress, but if she is to hold it her ammunition must be knowledge and training, and she must clamour until she gets the education which she so badly needs. The happiness of the husband, the health of the children, and the comfort of the household lie in _ her hands; she can make or mar their lives. As soon as a woman realises what power and influence is hers she will see that not only can she preserve the health and the happiness of her own home, but by teaching others she can creatc national health and national happiness.

Mrs Broroton starts out with the explanation that what she has to say is based "on experience derived from her own practice and observation." The chief purpose of the book is, in short, to enable the average mother who roads it to look inward on her own home with its delicate network of duties, privileges, joys, and sorrows, and to lighten and brighten to some degree the seemingly common round and trivial task. She aims also at "inducing'the more thoughtful mother to look outward beyond the home circle towards the vast multitude of imperfectly developed mothers who are suffering under the handicap of extreme riches or extreme poverty, and enable her to realise that her own apparently modest successes and failures, precisely because thev are the sweet or bitter fruit of her own experience, may give her just the necessary power to help by pen, bv purse, or by practice those who, owing to the defects and imperfections of their upbringing, have come short of . the full comprehension of the potentialities of motherhood."

Further, she hopes to effect "Some quickening of woman's social and civic eonseicnec." but expresses "an over-deep-ening conviction that the right solution of these simple' questions of everyday life and domestic routine is inextricably bound up with the most successful, working out of the prcblom of raising the status of woman i.isitlc and outside the home."

We must begin to cducato the child not only before it is born, but before ever it "is conceived; in fact, we must begin with the education of the future mother and the future father.

Thero are, of course, women who long to do their duty, who have still some of the savage mother's maternal instinct left, yet who "would be ashamed to ask even their medical adviser for help or guidance when trombling on the verge of motherhood. These women are too often responsible for a massacre of the first-born.

Science, with all its boasted progress, has failed to diffuse certain cardinal and fundamental facts about iife, thereby leaving Nature to do, in these highly-artificial days, what she could only do satisfactorily when men and women lived natural lives. But it is of no use to mourn over the past. Our hope lies in the future, and undoubtedly women themselves are rapidly awakening to their grave responsibilities. They see that in the struggle for civilised existence it is the quality of the units of a nation which counts, and not mere numbers. If only their plain duty is put before them they will, as the generations of women in the past have done, be not only ready, but eager, to accomplish what is cxepected of them. What is essential is that women should not look at wifehood and motherhood as the refuge of those who fail to succeed in professions or trades, but as the highest of all professions, and the most complex of all businesses. In conclusion I will quote from Ella Wheeler Wilcox: — Yes, wo want women, strong of soul, yet lowly, With that rare meekness, born of gentle man ; Women whose lives are pure and clean and holy, The women whom all little children bless; Brave, earnest women, helpful to each other, With finest scorn for. all things low and mean; Women who hold the names of wife and mother Far nobler than the title of a queen. Oh, these arc they who mould the men of story, These mothers, ofttimes shorn of graeo and youth, Who, worn and weary, ask no greater glory Than making some young soul the home of truth ; Women who, low above their cradles bending, Let flattery's voice go by, and give no heed, While their pure prayers like incense aro ascending; These aro our country's pride, our country's need. A vote of thanks to Mrs King for her interesting and instructive address was passed with acclamation.