OUR BABIES

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19990, 5 November 1927, Page 16 (Supplement)

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 < fihe top of a precipice than to maintain an ambulance at the bottom. ’ ’ The following article, written by E. V. M‘Collum and Mina Simmonds, appeared in the magazine New Zealand Women and Home a few months ago. Dp M‘Collum, of John Hopkins University, Baltimore, U.S.A., is an acknowledged authority on the newer knowledge of nutrition, and has carried out much invaluable research work in the subject, with Miss Simmonds in collaboration. The article is so good and so appropriate that we wish to pass it on to our readers:— ‘‘Eat—Don’t Drink—Your Spring Tonics!” “There are many of us who remember having to take, every spring, a course of sulphur and molasses, or sassafras tea or slippery elm bitters, or some other household remedy. Our elders looked on winter as an unhealthy season, when poisons accumulated in the system because of poor elimination or bad colds or other infections, which had to be gotten rid of by taking drugs. They believed that the blood became thick during the winter, and that a spring tonic or blood purifier was necessary to assist Nature in making its spring house-cleaning. “Our pioneer ancestors did feel less well at the end of winter than they did at other seasons of the year. With little capital and no reserve food supply, their diet necessarily very simple and monotonous and entirely inadequate. It often consisted of little more than corn or wheat bread, salt pork, and molasses. After three or four months on such a diet they naturally felt ‘run down.’ By this time spring had come, so they looked on spring as a time of ill-heaJth. “Ate recently as 30 years ago most general village stores, throughout the country placed on their counters, some time before the holiday season, a dozen kinds of almanacs advertising one or more remedies for self-medication. These almanacs described ‘that tired feeling’ as well as almost every other ill to which human nature is heir, and graphically illustrated in pictures various degrees of despair and sufl’ering. And, of course, they prescribed the remedy which g that particular almanac was designed to sell. “Many a farmer and villager whose family wore cheap clothes, worked hard, and spent nothing on amusements, who lived on mortgaged land which They would be unable to clear of debt in 20 years, invested many dollars annually injhcse tonics, b»ooa purifiers, and spring medicines, while enterprising quacks and unscrupulous manufacturers of ‘patent’ medicines built up immense fortunes selling them. ‘These vendors of spring medicines had a powerful ally in the spring diet of their customers. With the coming of warmer weather various greens such as wild onion, dandelions, and sorrel were gathered from the fields and added to the diet. The cows, which because of poor feeding had been dry all winter, again began to give milk. The barnyard hens, which because of poor management and poor food, had produced scarcely an egg, nowjidded worms, insects, and tender leaves of grass to their diet, and began to lay eggs. The garden soon came on with a supply of fresh vegetables. AJI these spring foods were eaten with relish by the badly nourished people, but when their tired feelings disappeared the ‘tonics’ were given the credit! People much prefer to believe in the mysterious potency of drugs than to put their faith in simple everyday foods. “Nowadays, if one investigates these same communities, one finds prosperous farms, well supplied with dairy cattle and flourishing orchards and other signs of moderate prosperity. Roads are good, wheareas in the early days they were impassable for weeks at a time because of water or snow. Country people have more canned foods, they put in a supply of apples, cabbages, turnips, parsnips, and so forth for fall and winter use, and so they have a decidedly better winter diet than their parents and grandparents had. “Gone is that tired feeling in spring! And with it has gone the demand for the sarsaparillas, medical discoveries, blood purifiers, and tonics! Research and rational living have proved that there is less difference between winter and summer diets there is corrspondingly less difference in the way people feel in different sasons of the year. “Since the most important times in the life of the individual are infancy and childhood, when the physical development is largely determined, the winter diet should be kept as satisfactory as possible during these critical periods, so as not to interfere with the child’s growth and progress. And what is necessary for the child is necessary for the adult, to conserve the vitality and maintain health. “We cannot advise too strongly that those who live in villages or on farms away from the city markets should grow this year and every year such root vegetables as turnips, sweet potatoes, and carrots, and such leafy vegetables as celery, cabbages, and onions, which can be preserved for months in a dry place where they will not freeze. Apples can be kept practically all winter. These foods, in addition to the regular winter diet and with plenty of milk, ensure a satisfactory and satisfying diet. It is not necessary for these foresighted people to spend much money for frosh green foods in winter; they have on hand everything they need to avoid a run-down condition in spring.”