OUR BABIES

Waikato Independent, Volume XXXII, Issue 2852, 21 May 1932, Page 2

OUR BABIES

(By “Hygcia.”)

Published under the auspices of tho Royal New Zealand Society for tho Health of Women and Children (Plunkct Society). The name of Sir Truby King is associated by most people, with the saving of infant lives in this country —the fruit of his work is known all over the world to-day—but. the earliest stages are not so generally understood as they deservo to be. Something over 30 years ago Dr King (as lie was then) was appointed to the position of medical superintendent of

. tiie Scacliff Mental Hospital, Otago. This institution included a farm estate of nearly .1000 acres, and Dr King applied his scientific knowledge and indefatigable energy and resource to the pursuit of practical scientific farming. His work and observations along these lines showed that in plants as in animals the inroads of disease were best prevented by keeping the organism well nourished, vigorous,' and healthy. For instance, the potato plants which ! suffered most from various blights were those which had been grown on soil , which had been badly tilled or which, I for other reasons, was lacking in the ' salts and other food constituents needed for their proper nutrition and growth, and therefore had the least vital energy and resistiveness to disease. The turnips attacked by aphides in a field were not, as one might have ' expected, the healthiest and most appetising, but always the weakest and least resistive, and he showed most conclusively that it was by the application of the simple laws of Nature to the | culture feeding of animals that the highest and surest results were obtain--1 cd. A few illustrations will show the 1 meticulous care which Dr King bestow- | od upon every detail connected with his farm experiments. One who knew him and his work personally at the time wrote: "In connection with the careful feeding of cows, I remember one evenI ing going into a very extensive byre about milking time, and being intensely 1 amused and interested to watch a cow wearing, say, a blue label round its neck, turned into a blue-labelled stall, 1 and be .fed from a blue-painted bucket —an ingenious device of Dr King’s to j prevent any mistake on the part, of the ! mental patients who acted as farm labourers. I was told that neither the , cows nor>thc men ever made a mistake, and in this way each cow got the proper amount of food specially adapted for her grade or class.” Tho main object of these devices and experiments was to find out precisely 1 lie best quantity and class of food for dairy cows at various stages. One could not help being greatly impressed by the enormous demands made by heavy milking on the digestive powers of the cow. However, it was not the. mothers alone that received attention. Coddling of the calves was done aw ay with, and they were taken out of stuffy sheds and put under a simple paling verandah, open to the sun all day, but carefully sheltered from the wind. Here they slept all night, in the open air, even at midwinter, just as pthisis patients do nowadays. As for the feeding, the diet for the calves was laid clown and systematically carried out by an inmate of the institution, who couid follow the definite instructions given him week by week. Fed systematically in this way, I was told that the calves gained on an average over 501 b more in the first six months of life than they had gained previously; and more important still, none died, though previously many had succumbed to "scouring,’.’ or, as we say of babies, "infantile diarrhqoa.” Next, the pigs came in for their share of attention, with the result that Seacliff carried off all the prizes at the largo annual agricultural and. pastoral shows hold at Dunedin, until at last the farmers protested at the Government competing. Special houses and runs were built for the fowls, similar care being taken, and always with the same wonderful results. Fowls at three months were sent to the Dunedin market weighing 4 : }lb. and the supply of eggs went up in leaps and bounds. The potato crops yielded equally remarkable results on the application of scientific knowledge of requirements and. proper system. At. about this time Dr King became deeply impressed by the fact of the dreadful preventable wastage of infant life, which was directly due to ignorance of these same simple fundamental truths of Nature. Tie saw that whilst, for many years scientific principles of nutrition had been applied by good farmers 1o the rearing of stock, the far more delicate and important human "stock” was left to the mercy of ignorance and prejudice—many hundreds of babies being needlessly killed or crippled every year even in little New Zealand. Ilis attention became concentrated on the application of the natural laws of growth and nutrition to tho rearing’ of human babies, and from this sprang his life work for the welfare of mothers and children-

Tlio immediate necessity was the saving of infant lives, but behind this lay a far more fundamental and far-reach-ing purpose—the enlightenment of mothers, and of the community in general, so that, the cause of the trouble—ignorance might be cut oft at its source. With this end in view, the society, afterwards to be world known as the

Plunket Society, was founded bv Dr King in Dunedin in 1907. The aims and objects formulated at the inauguration of that society laid down a pol- j icy so fundamentally sound, allowed / for so wide a scope, that they stand unaltered to-day in word or intention, in spite of the rapid and widespread development. of the society's activities.