OUR BABIES.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1728, 19 April 1913, Page 11

OUR BABIES.

[Br Hygeia.]

Published under the auspices of the Society for the Health of Women, and Children. "It ia wiser to put up a fence at the top of ■ & precipice than to maintain an ambulance at. the bottom." THE ONLY COMMON-SENSE WAY .OP FEEDING BABIES. Nurses find it difficult to get women to use their reasoning faculties with regard to the rearing of children. For instance, one of itho commonest remarks made by mothers .in respect .to their bottle-fed infants, when advised to chauge to humanised milk is: "I shall make no change so long as what lie i.j getting continues to agree with him." No matter how demonstrably wrong in its nature and components tho food in use may be; no matter how inevitable the imperfection of structure and development that may result in the long run from its continued use; and how gravo the risks of debility and disease, the mother tends to hold stubbornly to her first decision: "I shall mako no change as long as baby remains healthy." She thinks this is unanswerable common sense, though a moment's reflection 6hows the absurdity of such an attitude. It means notlfing moro nor less than this: until the mother has damaged her baby so greatly that it begins to obviously break down, she will continue to use a wrong food even after it has been shown to be wrong. There is only one cominon-senso way of feeding a baby, and that is tho -way of Nature—itlie. Almighty's way. Failing, this, the babv should bo given milk conforming as closely as possible to human milk, viz.: humanised milk. SEDUCTIVE TEMPTATIONS. There are undoubtedly strong temptations in other directions. A" seductive characteristic of most patent baby foods, and of condensed milk, is the fact that they tend to be well borne at first, and the baby seems to thrive on them, for a time at least. Too late mothers comc to realise, in a large proportion of cases, that it' is not firm, healthy bone and flesh they have been forming, but weak flabby tissues whioh cannot hold out against disease. Their infants may take prizes at baby shows, but they will not prove winners' in the race of life. For distance contest good muscle, sound teeth, perfect digestion, and healthy,, active heart, lungs, brain, and n(Wes are of the first importance, and the* 1 things aro not to be expected in babies fed contrary to tho laws'xand provisions of Nature. Mothers give the digestive organs of the baby credit for being able to transmute almost anything—the milk of animal, condensed milk, patent vegetable foods, otc.—into sound flesh and blood. Indeed, there is much to support the fallacy. You can keep a baby alive, and even get it to grow and seem well, on an infinite variety of improper foods—foods that will not make perfect tissue—foods that will result in weak digestion, and tend to debility of body, mind, and spirit in the long run. BABIES HARD TO KILL. Mr. Broadbent, Mayor of Huddersfield, said at a lecture given in Edinburgh some years ago:— "It is a well-known fact that some babies you cannot kill.-- You can rob them of their mother's milk, feed them with unsatisfactory milk through , a long tube out of a dirty feeding-bottle, give them all kinds of'odds and ends, bread, chipped potatoes, fried fish, and even pickles ;and patent foods, yet they persist in living. But this regimen will effectually dispnso of most babies, and tho few that survive aro l'icketty, poor creatures that will probably be of no use in the world to themselves or to anybody else, and will supply gaols and lunatic asylums and workhouses with inmates. Had the splendid persistence of the little mortal been backed up by proper food and treatmont, the clvild would have-stood a good cha'ice of b?ing a centenarian; with such an initial vitality,-and such power of resisting adverse conditions, there is nothing that such a child could inot . havei"done. The case is an extreme but it illustrates the connection that I . want to establish, between the life and health of children. Under tho extremely bad conditions tliat I have hinted at, probably 99 out of: every hundred would die. Improve Hie conditions. and yon would soon reduce the rate to 30 or 40 per cent.; but this would indicate that the 60 or 70 survivors had passed through a severe struggle to maintain existence, and would be each more or less subject to fall by subsequent attacks on their vitality. Improve the conditions again, and yon would reduco the death-rate ' to,. say,. 10 per cent., and the 90 survivors would all be for batter than any of the GO or 70 survivors who have pulled through the adrsrse conditions to which the 30 or 10 had succumbed. There is no question that the death-rate of children indicates clearly . and definitely the health conditions of. child life. ... I talic- it that every life lost points to many lives injured, and I will for the present state as my assumption- that every infant life lost is wastage ot lift hi itself, and indicates further wastage of health amongst tho survivors."

Glaxo Builds Bonny Babies.—Advt.