BUILDING A NATION

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume XXIV, 23 June 1928, Page 10

BUILDING A NATION

THE “BABY” WORLD. Are we attaching as much importance to the Infant Welfare part of .Nation Building as we should ? The development of our babies into strong men and women, every faculty normal, unimpaired constitutions. ( Many are saying yes, there are Plunket Societies and other excellent Institutions where, if mothers attend with their delicate babies _everv chance of starting them ;, u "'the right road to health is within reach but the question should be— Are We Doing All We Can lor the M Child?

Treatment as above only refers to the post-natal stage. Science teaches us that the pre-natal state must be taken into serious consideration. Not only thoughts negative or positive have their channel of action upon the unborn 'babe, as the foundation for character building is then in its initial stage, but other influences are of as much importance. What is taken by the mother, has come prominently under notice. With certain conditions various classes of food which might prove injurious to mother and child are eliminated from diet. Alcohol Harmful Sir F. Truby King, C.M.G., M.V, B.Sc., known the world over as New* Zealand’s pioneer in infant welfare work, in his book makes the following statement: — “If the mother fails to take proper exercise and to breathe pure air, she brings on indigestion and constipation, and tends to suffer from headache, neuralgia, and weari Hess, because hex- blood becomes impure and poisoned. Matters are made worse by taking ale or stout, because then mother and child are both dou'bly poisoned The most delicate and sensitive parts of the unborn child are its rapidly growing brain and nervous system; naturally these suffer most, but impurity

of the mother's blood leaves no part of the young organism undamaged” Dr. Daisy Platts-Mills, M.8.Ch.8. (N.Z.), another student of the subject has said:—

Woman’s greatest gift is the power and the spirit of Motherhood. Around it centre the richest jewels with which she is endowed—all the beauties of body, mind, and soul. Nature’s ideal for us is health of body and of mind. To help us she has given us wonderful powers of resistance. By them the body is enabled to resist disease, and the mind is strengthened against temptations to wrong-doing. It is of the utmost importance that these powers should be kept at their best. The resisting powers of the mind dwell in the most delicate nerve cells of the brain, the cells which give selfcontrol and power of judgment. Whatever tends to lower these powers of body or of mind is an enemy to health and happiness. Pure Blood.

The blood is the life —upon its purity depends the welfare and hap piness of each one of us, and through us, of the whole human race. How we must guard that stream. Enemies are ever working to defile it They work in various ways, but their one object is to poison the blood stream. Some of them effect the “radial organs,” whose function it is to transmit life. By injuring them, or by implanting their evil gifts in the germ cell, to be passed on to future generations, they do their cruel work Of destroying the health and happiness of the race. • They poison the life stream at its source. One of the worst of these is alcohol. No enemy is more cunning. It attacks the resisting power of the mind by paralysing the delicate nerve cells. Evidence of so definite a character cannot but arrest the attention of the Mother seeking the best for the dearest treasure in her worlld —the baby. Development.

The progressive order of the development of the child is, heart, lungs, muscular system, centres of learning, and the moral centres, all governed by the brain, that delicate cell structure most easily harmed by agency of deleterious influences In the pre-natal sate baby’s heart is beating, but it is not until birth that the lungs have power to function. Next the muscular system is gradually developed and the reasoning capacity of the brain expands, conscience awakes and knowledge of right and wrong becomes a live factor in the growing child.

That last faculty to be developed is the most powerful in the world, its influence makes or mars the lives of men and women, therefore what must it mean to the human race, and National Life to start along “Life’s High-way” with the greatest of all faculties unimpared. Sensitive Centres.

The “Moral” centres may be rudimentary or Undeveloped, but may be capable of some growth, and may improve with tuition, experience and spiritual influence, but they are the last developed brain cells in the individual and in the Race. They are weakest, least ■stable, most easily disturbed, and least resistant to pernicious effect. Alcohol has a specific affinity for the brain centres, paralysing those centres in inverse order of their development, the last developed suffering first and most.

The above rests upon scientific argument which to-day establishes that the Mother can harm the little life entrusted 10 her care by agency of taking into her body the cell destroyer, for in every sense alcohol is a life destroyer. It always hurts the best parts, the most delicate parts, and the most important parts of the brain first. “The tissue of the life to be We weave -with colours all our own, And in the field of destiny x We reap as we have sown.” The point about alcohol is simple enough. It is a poison.”—Sir Frederick Treves. Surgeon to the King.