OUR BABIES.

Waikato Times, Volume 97, Issue 15184, 9 March 1923, Page 7

OUR BABIES.

GLEANINGS prom many quarters FOR THE BENEFIT OF NEW ZEALAND MOTHERS.

(By “Hygeia.”)

The following article wse sent to us by Miss J, B, N. Paterson, who assisted Dr Trilby King in the recent Health Campaign throughout the Dominion:

At Warsaw. The sun poured into the classroom of the University at Warsaw on the upturned faces of the listening students. They were intent, this lectur. er caught their attention —and hold it; what was he saying now, this militarylooking professor? “Students, oast your eyes on this gold signet ring and compare it with the brass knob on the window —the sun is shining on both. Well, apparently their value is intrinsically the same, but really it is poles asunder —so great, I would have you remember, is the difference between mother’s milk and cow’s milk as far as baby is concerned.

Professor Michaelowioz proceeded: “The same fluid w’hich has nourished the child for nine months before birth 'will nourish him (and was intended to nourish him) for nine months after birth —it is only the colour of the fluid w'hich has changed."

Breast-feeding versus Bottle-feeding. 'Dr Truby King was told by the Medical Chief of the Children’s Hospital in Warsaw that, owing to the shortage of cow’s milk, bottles, and teats, even the highest in the land had to return to the “natural" way of feeding their infants, with the following result —the . breast-fed children withstood the ravages of war till their third yhgr, while artificially-fed children succumbed much earlier. Nutrition. Remember that nutrition is the crux of the whole, matter, and nutrition is not limited to feeding alone, but includes food, air, hygiene, clothing, and environment. The cells of the in. fant’s body are growing daily—or should be if properly treated. What they lose this week cannot bo made up next; any illness or check leaves its mark —as one sees no nails,, after a severe illness, or no wooj op sheep after a period of drought, when it was impossible for the animals to get c ;gh food to nourish them. Measles, Etc.

One still hears so-called educated people, who forget }\e are living in the age of preventive medicine, saying that “so and so has measles or scarlet fever, but that the sooner the mother gets the family over these, childish ailments tt\e sooner, she is free.”

What nonsense! Some even go the length of suggesting that, if one child takes measles or chicken pox, the proper tiling to do is to rmy the others into the same room in the hope that they will catch it, and so they will get it all over at once. Sometimes it is got over sooner than the adviser anticipated, and a little cross in the graveyard is all that is left to remind one of the crime against childhood. Allowing Children To* Go To School

From Infected Homes.

There are parents who evade the Health Laws and permit their children to go to school and risk infecting others while their brothers or sjstcr lies sick at home; but, “it's only measles"! How many are the defects measles leaves!

Mothers, when will you realise that measles is not a childish ailment, it is not part of the child’s cvoluLion, like teething? If the nutrition of the child were ail it should be,, and the schools all they should be, and the neighbours honest about keeping children from school whenever any suspicious disorder arose at home, then measles would be stamped out: but even now —if the resistive power of the child is what it should be — he will be able to withstand the onslaught of the mpasle microbe. It is a question of the survival of the fittest —the babe or the microbe —the British army or the German army. A well-nourished, properly-fed child has a high resistive power, and can withstand the microbes which assail him.

The Teeth. The first teeth are completed out of the mother's blood before the child is born—therefore it is of vital importance that the expectant mother should attend to hygenic habits, out. door exercise, cold bathing, and proper diet; a pure biood supply depends on a combination of the foregoing essentials. The first teeth should not decay.

The second teeth should be built mainly out of the mother’s milk, and must be so built as to last not for 20 or 30 years only, but for life.