OUR BABIES

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 19578, 26 August 1933, Page 14

OUR BABIES

BY HYGEIA. Published under the auspices of the Royal New Zealand Society for the Health of Women and Children (Plunket Society). “It is wiser to put up a fence at the top of a precipice than to maintain an ambulance at the bottom.” INCREASING THE CHILD’S RESISTANCE Following our talk of last week on “Colds,” this article will give a few hints to the mother who courageously determines to go about what one calls for want of a better name the “hardening off” process. Coddling The tradition that illness is directly due to cold or chill, and that multiplication of clothing is a means of preventing this evil, is so deeply ingrained and has ruled the mind so long that it sometimes seems unalterable. No one doubts the necessity of warm wrappings of cotton wool and well-warmed rooms for tiny, premature babies, but the plump robust baby is much earlier and more easily able to adapt itself to changes of temperature than is generally supposed, and, once able to run about, a healthy child can accommodate itself to cold in a remarkable way without ill-effects or even discomfort. The Function of the Skin The skin plays a vitally important part in this matter of heat regulation. It is something far more than simply a beautiful and useful covering to the body; it is a marvellous and complicated organ concerned in the regulation of body temperature, and has positive functions by which “health is directly influenced. But most of us unfortunately (children and grownups too) have skins which are more or less useless—definitely and inevitably rendered useless because they have been stifled from birth with too many clothes and never taught to function! How few of us realise that a healthy active skin surface will do more to keep us really permanently warm and comfortable, let alone free from colds, than any amount of extra clothing or the most luxurious of central heating. But, like every other organ, the skin can only develop its function by means of exercise of the same, and the agents which develop that function are light, air, sun, and changes of temperature. Consequently the skin which is kept constantly covered and “coddled” gradually becomes useless and powerless as a protective organ. This is why the coddled child feels the cold and reacts so disastrously to changes of temperature, and this is also probably the origin of the belief that colds and other ailments are caused by a chill. Coughs, colds, and bronchitis are as definitely infectious diseases as measles and mumps, and are caused by germs “caught” directly or indirectly from any other person suffering from the disease. But chilling of the body does definitely lower the resistance to infection, and so predisposes. The "coddled” child is constantly in this way, while the hardy child with an active skin keeps himself warm automatically and maintains a high rate of resistance to germ infection. The coddled child should not be suddenly switched on to cold baths or sent out of doors in the nude. Far from it. The “hardening off” process must be carried out very gradually, and with every care against sudden changes of treatment. Some people believe the best and quickest way to teach a little child to swim is to throw him into deep water. They think that it is natural to him to be able to swim to save his life, and that in doing so he will also have acquired suddenly and without any preliminary training a most valuable accomplishment, besides acquiring fortitude and resourcefulness in an emergency and a strong, well-controlled nervous system. It is wonderful how widespread is this fallacy, as to its being a sensible thing to throw a child into deep water. Perhaps once in twenty times, if the distance to be traversed were very short, the child would manage to struggle out, but nineteen times out of the twenty he would drown if not rescued. Suppose the child did manage without assistance, would he really be benefited by the sudden trial to which he had been subjected? Quite the reverse would usually be the case. The sudden immersion and terror would be a

great shock to the whole system, and, far from the memory being pleasurable, the child would regard with dread and alarm the idea of any repetition of the painful experience and struggle in spite of his survival. To the mother of a child who constantly catches cold we say most emphatically that if she is clear headed enough to face the facts and courageous enough to map out a course of treatment and stick to it faithfully she will be repaid a hundredfold—though not at once, of course; and it will be a great temptation to blame the treatment for the first cold which comes along after the regime has been instituted, and to revert in fear permanently to the old ways. Courage and perseverance, however, will win in the end. Now is the time to start, with spring and summer days in prospect, and for those who care to follow them we purpose to give next week some hints on how to proceed.