OUR BABIES.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIC, Issue 14039, 23 October 1909, Page 2

OUR BABIES.

By i;i, I'ub!l?llt>l under tile auspices ||,n Sneietv for the Promotion of tho Health ot Women nn« 1 Children. \\V. regret that o\vin;_' to the Conference of tho Society in Wellington tins week there lias been no time t'> reply to ''Biter." 'i'lio subject is 0110 ot such importance. that it cannot bo • lismisicd iu a few liucs. The followrig extracts from • [';irenthood and Eacc Culture," l>y I)r C. W. Saleebv, which was published during the present year, arc of paramount im--00 rt a nee: — Uur printo assumption from beginning to end is that "tlicro is 110 wealth but life." . . Wo have been considering man from tho point of view of what is transmits to offspring by parents. But a word must bo said as to tho other factor which, with heredity determines tho character of tlio, individual—and that factor is tho environment. I wish merely to liot-o the irio-t important aspect of tho environment on human beings, and to observe that historians hitherto have whnlly ignored it; yet its influence is iuealulablo. I refer to motherhood. Ono might have tho most perfect system of selection of the finest and highest- individuals for parenthood ; lint tho babies whoso potentialities —heredity gives w> more —aro so splendid arc always, will be always, dependent upon motherhood. What tho state of motherhood during tho decline and fall of tho Fotnan Empire This factor counts in history, and always will count w> lone: as, three times in every century. tho only wealth of nations is reduced io dust, and is raised again From infancy. As to Rome, we know little, whatever may be suspected : but wo know that hero in the heart of tho .••rentost-Emoire in history—and it is at the heart that Empires rot —thousands of mothers so out every day to tend machines, whilst their own flesh and blood, with whom lies the Imperial destiny, aro tended anyhow or not at all. It may yet bo said by some «i----lightened historian of tho futnro that tho living wealth of this people in tho twenthieth century began to bo eaten away by tho cancer which we call "married women's labour," and that, as will be evident to that historian's readers, its damnation was sure. To-dav our historians and j>oliticians think in terms of resinients and tariffs and Dreadnoughts; the timo will come when they must think in terms of babies aud motherhood. V"o must think in such terms too if wo wish Great Britain to bo much longer great. Meanwhile some of us see tho perennial slaughter of babies in this land, and the deterioration of many for everyone killed outright, tho waste of mothers' travail and tears, and wc recall i'uskin's words: — Nevertheless, it is open, I repeat, to serious question, which I leave to tho reader's pondering, whether, among national manufactures, that of Souls of a good quality may not at last turn out a quite leadingly lucrative one? Nay. in some far-away and yet u'll- - hour I can even imagine that England may cast all thoughts of possessive wealth back to tho barbaric nations among whom tliev first arose; and that, while the sands of the Indus and adamant of Golconda may yet stiffen tho housings of the charger, and flash from tho turban of tho slave, she, as a Christian mother, may at last attain to the virtues and the treasures of .1 Heathen one, and be ablo to lead forth her Sons, saying: "Theso are. -MY Jewels." Had all Roman mothers b'-en C'orenolias. would Homo have fali'ii ? Consider the. imitation mothersno longer mammalia —to bo iound in certain classes to-day—mothers who should be ashamed to look any tahfo eat in the faeo; consider the ignorant and down-trodden mothers amongst, our lower classes, and ask whether these things are not making history. Gibbon does not- enlighten us much on such vital matters, but my attention has been railed to the following passage, not irrelevant here. It is from the "Attic Nights" of Aulus (lellius. Book xii. chao. i, written altout A.P., 150. "Onco when I was with the philosopher Favortnus word was brought to him that tho wife of ono of his disciples had just given birth to a son. "Let us go." said he, "to inquire after the mother and to congratulate the father." The latter was a nobli of Senatorial rank. All of us who were present aeeom panied hiru to the house, and went it with him. Meeting the father in tin hall he embraced and congratulated hint. and. sitting down, inquired hov his wife had come through the ordeal And when he heard that the youm mother, overcome with fatigue, wa: now sleeping, lie began to speak niori freely. "Of course," said he. "she will suckle the child herself." And when tin girl's mother said that her daughtei must l*j spnred, and nurses obtained : i order that the heavy strain of niirsiot the child should not bo added to what she had already gone through, "I l>e;j of you. dear lady," said he, "to allow her to be a whole mother to her child. Is it not against Nature, and lieing only half a mother, to give birth to a child, and then at «>n«-i; to semi him away —to have nourished with her own blood and in her own body a something that she had never seen, and then to refuse it her own milk now that she •ees it living, a human being, demanding a mother's care? Or are yon one »f those who think that Nature gave a ivoman breasts, not that she might feci iier children, but. as pretty little hi 11leks to give her bust a pleasing eonLour? Many indeed of our present-day ladies—whom you are far from resembling—do try to dry up and repress that saered font of the hotly, the uourisher of the human race, even at "the risk they run from turning back and corrupting their milk, lest it should take off from the charm of their lieauty. In doing this they act with tlie same folly as those who, by the use of drugs and so forth, endeavour to destroy the very embryo iu their bodies lest a furrow should mar the smoothness of their skin and they should sixiil their figures in becoming mothers. Jf the destruction of a human being in its tirst inception, whilst it is being formeil, whilst it is yet coming to life, and is 1 till in tho hands of it.s artificer, Nature. be deserving of public detestation and horror, is it- not nearly as bad to deprive the child of its proper anil congenial nutriment to which Jie is accustomed now that he is perfected, is born into the world, is a child? "But it makes no difference —for ;is they say —so long as the child is nourished and lives, with whose milk it js done. "Why does he who says this, sinee he is so dull in iinflerstaiidiiig Nafure, think it also of no consequence ;n whoso womb and from whose blood fhe child is formed and fashioned? Foil's there nut, now iu the breasfs the same blood whitened, it is true, by agit-ation and heat —which was before iu the womb? And js not the wisdom of Nature to bo sent in this, that as soon as the blood has done its work of forming the bodv down below, aud the time of birth has come, it betakes ! itself to tho upper part of tho body, and is ready to cherish the spark of , lifo and light by furnishing to the new born babe his known and accustomed ' food! And so it is not an idle belief that, just as the strength and, character of the seed have their influence in determining the likeness of tho body

:iiul mn>d, do the nature and the properties of (he milk do their part. in effecting tin? same results. And this has been noticed not in man alone, buthi cattle as well. For it kids are brought- ii|> on I lie milk of ewes, lambs brought- up on that ol goats, it. is agreed (hat- the lalter have tfilfor wool, the toriner .softer. In the < asc of timber ami fruit trees, too, l-lv the qualities of the water and soil from which they draw their nourishment- liiusivc more influence in stunting or augmenting their growth than those of the seed nilicJi is sown, ;'iid often you may sec a vigorous smd healthy tree when transplanted into another place perish owing to the poverty of the soil. "Is it. then, a reasonable thins to corrupt the tine qualities of the newborn man, well endowed as to both body and mind so far as parentage is concerned, with the unsuitable nourishment of degenerate and foreign milk. - ' ". And besides these considerations. who can afford to ignore or belittle the fact that those who desert their olf-spring and send them away from themselves, and make them over to others to nurse, cut-, or at least loosen and weaken, that chain and connection of mind and affection bv which nature attaches children to their parents! For when the child v sent elsewhere, is away from sight the vigour of the maternal solicitude little by little dies away, and the call of motherly instinct grows silent, and forget fulness of a child scut away to nurse is not much less complete than that of one lost by death. "A child's thoughts and the love ho is ever ready to give are occupied, moreover, with her alone from him he derives his food, and soon he has neither feeling nor affection for the mother who bore him. The foundations of the filial feelings with which we are born being thus sapped and undermined, whatever affection children thus brought im may seen to have tor father and mother for the most partis not natural love, but the result of social convention."