OUR BABIES.

Waipa Post, Volume IV, Issue 159, 1 November 1912, Page 3

OUR BABIES.

BY HYGIiIA. Published under the auspices of the Society for the Health of Women and Children. " It is wiser to put up a fence at the top of a precipice than to maintain an ambulance at the bottom."

THE TYRANNY OF HABITS. (Continued.)

" Mud and mortar seem to be special favoarites with these children. Coal, cinders, and gravel were also mentioned in some of my cases. In nine out of my fourteen cases the habit began in the second year of life. In one only it began in the first year (at eight months); in two it began in the fourth year. "Now, what is the significance of this curious perversion of appetite. Aslha/e mentioned, there was nothing in any ol the cases to which I have referred to to suggest any mental deficiency. Imbeciles olten show a similar habit of dirteating, but in them it is less strange, lor it is associated usually with an extreme degree of mental deficiency. " Some light is thrown upon the point by the disorders with which pica is associated. It goes, I think, in the majority of cases with definite indications ol the nervous temperament. Une child I had seen a few months earlier lor spasmodic nodding, another a few months after the pica ceased was attended for wetting the bed, another subsequently developed stuttering and somnambulism, others, like the cases I have mentioned, show an abnormal passio.nateness or excitability. "No doubt these nervous symptoms are aggrauated by more or less digestive disturbance set up by the abnormal material eaten, but I think that the development ol other nervous disorders, in some cases after the pica has entirely ceased, and the family history in others, go to prove that the nervousness is partly at least cause rather than effect. "In almost all cases the appetite for ordinary food is extremely poor—in fact, it is often this rather than the dirt-eating which excites the mother's anxiety. The abdomen is usually large, the stools sometimes certain mucus, and the boweis are costive or irregular. It is natural enongh that subh symptoms should be induced by the indigestible substances eaten. But it seems to me clear that there was digestive disturbance before this habit began, and I suspect that this is so in the majority ol cases, and that the subsequent discomfort, hardly felt ar such perhaps byUhe child, plays some part in exciting the dirt-eating habit in a nervous child, This .s confirmed, I think, by the effect of treatment. The duration of the habit is often months, or even some years, if no special measures are taken forits cure. TREATMENT.

"The first essential in treatment is to prevent the child obtaining the dirt, coal. mortar, or other injurious substance tor which it craves ; the second is to improve the general health, especially its digestion.

" There is no part of the treatment more valuable than a few weeks of a bracing seaside place, or, if this is not attainable, at some high-standing, breezy, iniand country place. At the same iime, it will be necessary to aid digestion by the most careful dieting, and eare must be taken that the food is not such as to set up fermentation in the bowels, or to keep up a mucous catarrh by its irritating residue. I need not repeat here waat I have already said elsewhere on trie subject of feeding and indigestion. These cases of pica call for careful adaptation of the diet to the digestive' capacity of the par-

ticular child." (Geo. Frederic Still, M.A., M.D., F.R.C.P., Professor of Diseases of Children, King's College, London.)

REAL AIMS AND OBJECTS OF THE SOCIETY FOR THE HEALTH OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN. In one's travels-.throughout the Dominion one is daily confronted with evidences of the limited ideas-which still prevail in many quarters as to the broad scope and objects of the health mission which the Society has been carrying on for over five years. It is true that very fsw people now even pretend to think thai we arc primarily interested in the artificial feeding of babies—they understand our first objective is to ensure the health and fitness of the mother long before child birth, so that the baby may be born strong and healthy, and that it may be nurtured for the full term in the natural way. Further, most people realize that humanised milk merely means the milk of some mamal so modified as to make it approximate as nearly as possible to the milk designed by the Creator for the young human being—the substitute being frankly recognised as necessarily inferior to healthy human milk, and therefore only to be recommended where natural suckling is unobtainable. But this was not always so; only a few years have passed since the Society was frequently charged by prejudiced persons with encouraging women to feed their babies artificially. Having got past these first crude misconceptions we find ourselves still faced with a hazy idea lingering here and there that in some mysterious way the society may be doing away with the self-reliance of the mothers and, metaphorically speaking, "spoonfeeding them, through the agency oi the Plunket Nurses. Nothing can be further from the truth. The primary rules of the Society, the first injunctions given to its nurses, show the very reverse to be.the

case. INSTRUCTIONS TO PLUNKET NUfcSES. The main function of the Society's Nurses is to educate and help parents and others in a practical way in the hygicn>*>

of the home and nursery with a vjptr to conserving the health of the whplefamily while directing special atjpjffion to ihe needs of mother and offspring. The Society is anxious to bring/ibout a relation of the sufficingnessnn genetai*of obedience to the simple, knoVu-liWVsof life aud Nature to maintain the health of mother and child, and the

in3vitable Nemesis which follows sooner or later on any evasion of duty in this respect. Above all, it desires to avoid the

resorting to anything savouring of mystery, or suggestive of special knowledge or powers outside the range or under-

standing of ordinary men and women. The aim should always be to stimulate and quicken the interest and self-reliance in matters pertaining to the home, so that it may be regulated in a sensible and responsible way consistent with what is known at the present time asto the fundamental requirements of life. The Society's work is essentially a Health Mission. In regard to domestic hygiene, its trained nurses should take the place of untrained, unskilled neighbours or relations in as tactful a way as possible. They should endeavour to establish in the home an understanding and adoption of the simple principles illustrated in practice at the Karitane hospital, and inculcate I in the Society's books, pamphlets, "Our Babies." column, etc.