OUR BABIES.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1806, 19 July 1913, Page 11

OUR BABIES.

rBY HTGIU.I Published under the auspices of the Society for the Health of Women and Children. "It is wiser to put up a fence at tho top of a precipice than to maintain an ambulance at the bottom." MASTICATION. (By Dr. Harry Campbell.) (Continued from Last Week's Column.) Evolution of Jaws and Teeth. Inasmuch as before man learnt to break up the cellulose framework of his veeetable food by cooking, grinding, and other means, ho was compelled to make vigorous use of his masticjaory apparatus, we may be sure that in the pre-cookery period this was correspondingly strong and massive, but when the discovery of artificial means of disintegrating the celluloso (grinding and cooking) mastication was in great measure relieved of one of its chief functions, the jaws and teeth began to get smaller, while dental cares, hitherto almost unknown, became less rare, invading chiefly the third molars ("wisdom teeth"). Again, as the effect of agriculture was tq reduce the cellulose ingredients of vegetable food and thus to render it more easy of mastication, we find the jaws and teeth fruther diminishing in size during the next period, and diseases of the teeth increasing in frequency. These effects were not, however, pronounced during the early agricultural epoch, partly because man still continued to eat freely of raw vegetable food, and partly also because much of tlie cooked vegetable food needed, owing to its coarseness, considerable mastication. It is not until we arrive at comparatively, recent times that the effect upon the jaws and teeth of food artificially produced and prepared becomes pronounced. The present-day vegetable food—in our own country, at least —owing to the combined effects of improved agriculture and skilful milling and cooking, is so soft that it excites comparatively !Uttle mastication. We live, in fact, in an age of pap. Hence the modern jaw is undergoing considerable diminution in size, with the result that the teeth, which are not diminishing in number at the same rate, nre often unable to take up their normal position, while dental diseases have assumed truly alarming proportion's. THE INSTINCT. TO MASTICATE. During the first months of life the natural function of feeding at the breast provides the infant's jaws, tongue, and lips with all the needful exercise. Bottlefeeding fails to do this, and in consequence were frequently find bottle-fed children seeking to satisfy their natural instinct to use those structures by sucking their fingers or other convenient objects. Memo, by "Hygeia."—The best of bottlefeeding is inferior to suckling in regard to tho work done during, feeding, but if proper care is taken, the mother can -ensure that her baby shall "work for his living," and not merely imbibe his food in a passive way. The smaller the hole in the indiarnbber nipple the tetter, provided the baby can be brought to. work hard enough to secure sufficient milk in from a quarter of an hour to 20 minutes. This oan be effected by the mother holding the bottle and keeping a slight tension on it, and moving the teat about so that the baby's mouth is properly stimulated and has something to tug at. Thus, starting with the month, the whole system of tho baby is set hard to worknerves, muscles, circulatory, breathing, and digestive organs busily doing their appointed tasks. The long tube feeder is ono of the worst enemies of the modern baby. There, is' nothing to pull on, and the baby simply imbibes its food without appreciable stimulus or exercise. GIVE BABY 'A BONE. . The teeth are a provision for biting hard foods, but even before they - actually appear the child tries to exercise his toothless gums on any hard substance upon which, h© can lay hold, and there can Lte no doubt that his so doing tends to facilitate tho eruption of tho teeth, a truth which is, indeed, universally recognised, . whether by the primitive mot Kit whohangs tlie tooth of some wild beast round the neck (of her infant, or the up-to-date one who provides hers with a bejeweJM ivory or coral bauble. As soon as tfcS teeth have been out the masticatory instinct has among primitive peoples abundant scope in the chewing of the coarse, hard foods which constitute tlieir dietaTy; but in us modems, subsisting as We do mainly on soft foods,- it does not find its proper expression, and thus tends to die out- Nevertheless, it die 9 a hard death, and long continues to assert itself; witness the tendency of children to bite their pencils and nenholdeTS and to chew small preces of indiarubber for hours together. I have known a child to gnaw through a bone penholder much in .the same way as acarnivorous animal gnaws at a bone. I may allude in passing to the grinding of the teeth whicli takes place during sleep in disturbed states of the nervous svstern. It is a true masticatory act, in which the normal. lateral g™<l">£ movement of the lower jaw is well marked, and it may thus be regarded as a perverted manifestation of the masticatory instinct.