BABY'S WELFARE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 13683, 26 February 1908, Page 9

BABY'S WELFARE.

Every baby whose birth is registered in New Zealand henceforth is to start life equipped with a carefully-prepared pamphlet of practical hints, written by Dr. Agnes Bennett, B.Sc, M.8., CM., and provided gratis by the Government. " Baby's Welfare" is the title of the publication which is to be distributed by registrars of births. It contains practical hints in simple language about every sible difficulty likely lo puzzle the mother, and a hundred and one cautions by which difficulties may be avoided. Upon the subject of nursing, Dr. Agues Bennett makes observations which ate of general interest. "It has become a matter of common opinion nowadays," she states, " that mothers are losing the power of suckling their children. So widespread is the idea that many women think that where there is a baby there must be a bottle. The feeding-bottle is one of the evils of modern civilisation, and we ought to spare no effort in trying to banish it from our homes and institutions. Try as we may to imitate mother's milk, we can only attain a coarse approximation of the real thing. We may build up quite as big, plump children with the artificial substitute, but they have not the same reserve force or the same power of resisting disease as those who have had a fair start in life Ml Nature own way. A great many more mothers could nurse their children if 'hey knew the right way to go about it. • A physician in France has recently taken this subject in hand, and there, where the stigma of inadequacy has rested so long and so strongly upon mothers, he has succeeded hi proving that 97 out of every 100 uom< n can nurse their children. In the first Mtw Zealand Government Maternity Hospital £8 out of every 100 mothers have nursed their babies—the two per cent, who could not do so suffered from serious constitutional diseases, such a* consumption and kidney disease. Bottles are hardly known in these hospitals."