TALKS ON HEALTH.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXIV, Issue 955, 27 December 1933, Page 12

TALKS ON HEALTH.

(By A FAMILY DOCTOR.) If you have been blessed with a tiny, helpless baby, who is solely dependent on you for its health and happiness, will you do me the favour of reading the following hints on a variety of points? Baby’s vests must be longsleeved and high-necked. Remember that the lungs extend above the collarbone and all round under the arms to the back, and that low necks and short sleeves favour bronchitis. Napkins should never be put on without being rinsed through and thoroughly dried. Do not use soda or washing powder, as they cause chafing. Starch powder is better than fuller’s earth, as the starch is white and shows up the dirt; a mixture of starch powder and zinc powder is best of all. You must put the baby to sleep in a separate bed; every week numbers of infants are overlaid. Guard Against Cold. Infants are particularly susceptible to cold, especially in the feet. If you cannot get an indiarubber hot-water bottle, put a brick in the oven, wrap it in a blanket and use that to keep the baby’s feet warm. Of course you must see that the brick is not too hot and that it is well covered by the blanket; you do not want the baby’s feet to touch the naked brick. It is a mistake to drink stout in the belief that it will help, the flow of milk. That is nonsense, and is a relic of the days when the Sairey Gamps would order stout for the nursing mother and then drink it .themselves. Drink milk. Bottles with long indiarubber tubes are death-traps. Boat-shaped bottles with an opening at each end so that they can be washed through are the best. The Stooping Child. A stoop in a growing child should be carefully corrected as soon as it is noticed, or it will become a habit. The head must be held up and the shoulders back so as to allow of full expansion of the chest. Thp chest is really a bony box or cage containing the lungs and heart. But the cage is not made entirely of bone in a growing child; part of the skeleton is gristle. Now this gristle is soft and can be bent into bad shapes by a stooping attitude, and as the child grows the gristle disappears and gives place to hard bone which cannot be bent; it is permanently fixed. And now you see the importance of setting the bony cage in the right shape so that it may remain in that shape for ever. Danger of Artificial Supports. May I also remind you that I object to all artificial supports? A strong, well-brought-up child is quite capable of holding himself in a proper attitude without straps and leather apparatus. Jackets of any description are very rarely needed, and should only be ordered. by a doctor. They are only used in advanced cases of disease of the spine. You run a very real danger by resorting to artificial straps and stays. You prevent the muscles that ought to keep the figure in good trim from developing. You cannot have strong straps and strong muscles. If the straps do the work of the muscles, the muscles will waste away from disuse. Muscles are meant to be worked ; they enjoy being worked. If you tell them they need not work because you will get a strap to work for them, they begin to degenerate, just as you would if a* slave were hired to do all your work for y'ou; you would soon be flabby. The stays that some little girls wear are an abomination. Good muscles are the best stays, and the female mind must exercise its ingenuity in devising other methods of hanging clothes on children than by stays. A Cure For Constipation. Here is a cure for constipation: You must begin young; a mother who neglects to teach her children regular habits is laying up future trouble for them. If you have been constipated for years and years it makes the cure very difficult. You must eat slowly—gobbled food upsets the whole of the digestive organs and bowels; mastication is the first, and, therefore, the most important, process of digestion. You cannot masticate without good teeth; you must have good grinding power if you wish to avoid constipation. You must drink plenty of water; a large tumblerful before breakfast and again at night. Drink between meals and only sparingly at meals. Water is the best aperient. Avoid strong tea, muffins, hot buttered toast, stodgy cakes, suet puddings, pastry and new bread. Take brown bread, porridge, fruit, golden syrup, green vegetables. Take prunes or figs—pleasant and eifee-