OUR BABIES.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XL, Issue 11408, 27 October 1915, Page 6

OUR BABIES.

Published under the auspices of the' Society for the Health of Women and Children. ADDRESSES OF PLUNKET NURSES AND SECRETARIES. 1 ‘lt is wiser to put up a fence at the top of a precipice than to maintain an ambulance at the bottom.” Wanganui.—Plunket "Nurse Metge, Office of Society T.Y.M.I. Buildings, The Avenue. Office hours 3 to 4 p.m. daily except Tuesdays. Saturday 11 to 12 a. mi. Secretary Miss R. N. Cummins, P-O Box 84. Martbn. Plunket Nurse Jones every Monday. Office of Society Ingle Bros., Broadway. Telephone 37. Hours 1.30 to 5 p.'m. Hon. Secretary, Miss Cook, Bond Street, telephone 54. Christchurch —Plunket Nurses Hickson and Hansard. Office; Chancery Lane, Cathedral Square. Dunedin.—Plunket Nurses Lain and Torrance. Office: Health Department Rooms, Liverpool Street. Timarn. —Plunket Nurse Campbell. Office: Arcade Chambers. Ashburton —Plunket Nurse Hickson. Office: Bullock's Arcade. Invercargill.—Plunket Nurse O’Shea Allen’s Hall, Kelvin Street. Auckland. —Plunket Nurses Chappell and Brien, Park Street. Napier. Plunket Nurse Donald, Byron Street. New Plymouth. Plunket Nurse Morgan. Office, Town Hall. Wellington.—Plunket Nurse Laing. Office; 86 Yivian Street. Society’s Baby Hospital, Karitane Home, Anderson’s Bay, Dunedin. THE SOCIETY’S PUBLICATIONS. The new edition of Dr. Truby King’s book ‘‘The Feeding and Care of the Baby,” can be obtained from tne Matron, Karitane-Harris Hospital, Dunedin, the Plunket Nurses, the hon. secretaries, and the leading booksellers throughout the Dominion. Price Is, posted Is Id. The Society’s pamphlet ‘‘Baby’s First Mouth” is issued free by Government through all Registrars of births.

By "Hygeia.” PLUNKET NURSES’ SERVICES FREE. THE SOCIETY’S BOOK. The Society’s little t book, entitled “ What Baby Needs,” can be received from the Matron, Karitane, Harris Hospital, the Plunket Nurses, the honorary secretaries, and the leading booksellers throughout the Dominion. Price, 6d; posted 7d, POOD REFORMS FOR SCHOOLS. In a recent article it was pointed out how unfortunate it was that children attending Kindergartens should actually be led and trained to form wrong habits by being given food bit ween tbe normal meal times as a part of tbe ordinary routine of these institutions. We regret that similar practices obtain in boarding schools for older children. Customs of this kind were excusable and indeed only natural when the processes and requirements of digestion were unknown. Now, however, that physiological investigations' have proved conclusively that clear intervals of from four to live hours between meals afford the best conditions for the thorough digestion and assimilation of food there is not a particle of justification left for allowing milk or "pieces” between meals.

I can imagine that, at this stage, some of my readers will be exclaiming to themselves: — Is it fair that we should be exacting in our rules of life and hygienic discipline with regard to children, seeing that we indulge in morning and afternoon tea .ourselves, and feel as if we could hardly get along without them—that we need some pick-me-up to sustain and reanimate ns, and feel much better for it. The fact that we, over-civilised and enervated adults, have been gradually accustoming ourselves to more and more indulgences of this kind, and that many of us feel that we can hardly get along without early morning tea, mid-morning tea, and afternoon tea in addition t* our ordinary meals, and that when idling on board ship we actually get in a seventh refection, is no argument in T favour of such practices for the young—quite the other way. Most of us recognise that these habits are mere artificial indulgences, which interfere with our proper meals and tend to give us indigestion and "nerves.” However, we do get some quid pro quo for our impaired health in the form of social enjoj T ment with our fellows, just as the Japanese used to with their endless tea ceremonies. But surely the shallowest of us should be able to se that this habit, originating among sedentary townsfolk as a filipfor their jaded nerves, are the last things to encourage in children.

Here again I can anticipate the school teacher intervening:— But you are quite wrong in your assumption that we give the children stimulants between meals. All that we give is simple, nutritious, easily digestible food, whch we hold to be necessary, or at least desirable for building up their rapidlygrowing tissues and sustaining their flagging energies, An interval of four or five hours is surely too long to leave a growing child without fresh supplies. The proof that we are right is seen in the fact that, without giving any "stimulants,” we see the child brighten up as-the mere result of giving a glass of milk and a biscuit. The obvious conclusion is that the food was needed, and that the taking of it supplies the increased activity just as a timely shovelful of coal sets the fire burning brighter. This was the old assumption; but there could not be a greater fallacy. It takes hours to digest food and get it absorbed into tbe blood, packed away into tbe tissues and ready to be burnt by the oxygen in our blood. Much of what we take in to-day may not be burnt' for weeks or months hence. Food supplies are stored away for future use according to the needs of the economy. ALPINE CLIMBERS.

A person who has not learned the bare strudiments of the very modern science of physiology would gain much by a 10 minutes’ talk with an Alpine climber. Ask the pioneers who first ascended and traversed Mount Cook what they took in the way of food during their continuous

trudging day and night over ice and snow for 36 hours. They ate practically nothing. A few raisins, a little sugar*, possibly a biscuit or two—that' was all. They knew by experience better,than to waste the energies of their digestive and circulatory organs in doing the hard work of dissolving, preparing, absorbing, and assimilating food; They knew they had ample stores already laid by in their tissues and merely waiting for use. Contrast this position with that of the mother who thinks her child needs “sustaining” with a glass ot milk and a biscuit before he can be allowed to go out for a run before breakfast, or the schoolmistress who imagines that her girls need something to keep them going between their 8 o’clock breakfast and their 1 o’clock dimmer. Again, I can imagine the teacher persistently coming back to the point that whatever one may say the food does somehow enter into their composition and nourish them, because within live minutes of the taking of it the child is obviously brightened up and benefited. TEMPORARY STIMULATION. They might as well advocate that a child should be taught to suck its thumb, and contend that it must get some nourishment out of its thumb because the sucking of it is capable of causing a certain amount of exhilaration. I am quite serious on this point. Sir Thomas Lauder Brunton in his book on “Tho Disorders of Digestion” says:— . The mere act of mastication not only supplies a stimulus to the sensory nerves in the mouth, it leads to . ■ increased supply of blood-to the centres. . . . the pulse neh?s v. -, rapi a. The extent to becomes me** - will hardly be which this has not credited by any6’M Wnj. „ own tried the experiment Ifl IBj _ case, I find that sipping xMlf Wln*>-" glassful of water will &7 pulse from 76 to considerably 6VAC, 100. So that, in fact, a glass oi, cold water, slowly sipped, will stimulate tho heart as much as, or more than, a glass of brandy swallowed at a draught. Tho stimulant effect of sucking is soon learned by children, and we see them console themselves, and raise their spirits, by sucking their thumb when they are depressed by being children, or by any childish misfortune; in fact, under conditions similar to those under which children of an older growth might keep their spirits up by pouring spirts down. Is anyone going to contend seriously that the fact of our having such powers of temporarily stimulating the nervous system and the circulation justifies our using these means out of their proper time and place? Any doctor could tell us that one of the most fruitful sources of dyspepsia in adults is the fact that they have made the unfortnmite discovery that they can temporarily pull themeslves together and So away with feelings of discomfort, sinking, and faintness “by taking a little something” whether that something be fluid or solid, milk or hraudy. Tho difficulty is to break these vicious habits once they have been formed. Many a person tries in vain to “unwind the accursed chain” as De Cjuincey so picturesquely put it in his “Oonfessious of an Opium Eater ’ ’ NATIONAL FOOD REFORM. I take it as a hopeful sign that the London Times last year devoted a leading article to dealing with a conference held in London under the auspices of the National Food Reform A c sociation, the subject under consideration being “The Health and Food of Boys and Girls at Boarding and Day Schools, ” The Times said :

The conference is evidence of the attention that is now being pa’d to a subject too long neglected. , . . We may hope that a considerable step has been taken towards the development of a rational system of school diet to which all schools will, by degrees., approximate in practice. It was conclusively shown at the conference that increased attention to Ibis matter leads to a higher standard of health and greater physical and mental fitness. The concluding three of a dozen important points were as follow: 10. Abstain from eating when not hungry and from “stodging” between meals. Edison, tho famous inventor, wayns us against “stoking our engines with too much coal.” 11. In particular, sweets, chocolate, or biscuits and milk, or food of any kind, should not be eaten between meals or before going to bed. 13, The “grub-shop” and the “tuck-box” are two of the greatest enemies to all round fitness. Several schools represented _ at the* conference allow neither, while the 40 senior boys at one house themselves almost unanimously voted the abolition of the “tuck-box.” DR. PIOKERILL’S WARNING. In New Zealand we have had a special warning from our Professor of Dentistry, Dr. Pickerill, which it would he*- inexcusable not to take heed ot. Dr. Pickerill attributes the excess of decay of the teeth in New Zealand, compared with the Old Country, mainly to children being indulged with chocolates and biscuits between meals.