OUR BABIES

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 2914, 28 October 1916, Page 5

OUR BABIES

fßr -HTGErA.i Published under the auspices of the Bo?sl New Zealand Sooletr for the Health of Women and Children. "It is wiser to put a fence at the top of a precipice than to maintain an - ambulance at the bottom." PiUNKBT NURSES' SERVICES FREE THE SOCIETY'S BOOK. The society's book, entitled "Feeding and Care of Baby," can be obtained from the Matron, Karitane-Harris Hospital, the Plunkei Nurses, and tho honorary secretaries of the Societies. Price, Is. 3d. As the book has now been registered to go by magazine post, the postage is only ljd., including the -war stamp. Feeding and Care of Baby" can also be obtained from the leading booksellers throughout tho Dominion. NEW GOVERNMENT BOOK FOE MOTHERS. The new book, "The Expectant Mother and Baby's First Month," prepared by the society and issued by the Public Health Department free of charge, can be obtained on application (including ljd. for postage) from the Matron, Kari-tane-Harris Hospital, , tho Plunket Nurses, tho honorary secretaries of the branches, and the Registrars in tho principal towns. The society is specially anxious that every prospective mother should receive a copy of this little book long before the birth of her baby, and wo feel sure that if this is done very great benefit wili accrue to mother and child, and much trouble and sickness will be prevented. Our readers will do a good service if they draw the attention of any of thir friends, who would be benefited by the book, to_ the • fact that it may be had on' application. INFANTILE PARALYSIS. In the "Otago Daily Times" of October 6 appears the following note:— "During" the past week two further cases of infantile paralysis have been admitted to the Masterton Hospital." As the epidemics of this disease tend to begin in lato spring or early summer, we aie practically sure to hear of more cases from this time onwards, though tho main incidence this season may sot bo in tho locations most affected last year. The epidemics have been noticed to skip, a year, though the disease has a strong tendency to crop up from time to time in places where one or more epidemics have occurred reviously.-

Dr. Mexner, of New York, 6ays:— "Not since 1907, at which time the great epidemic appeared in the United States, has the country or New York been free from the disease. Each summer since, has been some accession in the number of cases; but tho rapid rise in tho cases th.is year (191 C) probably exceeds that of any previous year." Apparently Dr. Flexner does not mean that there has been a steady increase, year by year, on the cases that occurred in 1907; but that from 1908 onwardj there lias been a steady increase,, and then a. great epidemic in 1916. Unfortunately infantile paralysis has come to take a prominent position of late years in the list of child scourges, though it is not entirely confined to children. People in general are under the im- | pression that infantile paralysis was 4. rare disease until quite recently. lhis is not so. Throughout tho world thore have been epidemics from time to time, and scaiteved cases have always been occurring here and there. Why Infantile Jaralysis is More Feared Than Measles or DiaVrhpea. How is it, then, that infantile paralysis is the main dread of parents nowadays, and that the fear of this disease has come to dwarf the foar of all other diseases affecting children? I think there are two principal reasons —namely:— • (1) The . introduction of compnlsory notilcatibn of infantile paralysis, and tho publication throughout the world of statistics and bulletins bearing on the leading epidemics. From New York to Auckland the telegraphs and cables havo kept up advised as to the daily toll of victims, in a way which was quite unknown formerly. •

Dr. Haven liiraorson, Commissioner of Health, New York (writing in August, ISI6, on the epidemic which was prevalent in New York at that time), says:— This is the first time a consistent campaign of publicity and education has been undertaken during tho progress of the epidemic. ... At tho start of tho outbreak tho Health Department was confronted wjth two alternatives. Tho one was ■ secrecy —that is, whether we should simply seo what could bo dono by the medical control of cases without publicity. Tho other alternative was publicity, which offered a better prospect of a real control of tho disease. Wo decided in favour of publicity and hospitalisation. I As a result thoro has been an undue fright on the part of the public, probably owing to our unusual method of approaching the problem, lieporting cases was new, placarding houses was new, and hospitalisation was new.

(2) The second reason why parents iiro moro anxious nowadays about infantile paralysis than they are about diseases ■which causo an infinitely greater number of deaths and disabilities, is tho fact that the public aro more familiar with tho loading scourges—diarrhoea, diphtheria, and measles—and familiarity in the case of diseases tends to breed, if not contempt, a kind of tolerant indifference or fatalistic acceptance of the. seemingly inevitable. J<usfc now parents aro in thev stage of indignant protest against a disease whicli suddenly, without apparent « cause, strikes down an innocent child, and when it does not kill often leaves tho lifelong, handicap of more or less paralysis.

On the surface there is something specially dramatic and startling in the damage done by infantile paralysis; but if one looks under the surface nothing can bo graver or more tragic than the lifelong disabilities which may remain after diarrhoea, dipbiheria, or measles. Blindness, deafness, chest complaints, feeble digestion, poor nutrition, and impaired growth and vitality are all liable to result .from tho more common and familiar epidemic diseases. Indeed it has been pointed out again and again that such an easily-preventable disease as infantilo diarrhoea, which causes more deaths in. infancy than all other factors put together, maims for life 10 times as many children as it lulls. ■\Yo have no sense of proportion. We take more interest in a single murder than wo do in the unobtrusive, but equally tragic, deaths and maimmgs of thousands of little children by diseases due solely to our own ignorance and carelessness. • Tho following table, taken from Dr. Emerson's paper, will bring home to many people, not how they hare exaggerated the importance of infantile paralysis (for one can scarcely exaggerate the gravitv of such a disease), but their strange 'failure to appreciate the etunendous gravity of much commoner and more easily avoidable diseases:•Deaths of Children Under Five Tears of Age. For the three years 1913-15. (City of Now York.) Diarrhoea. ] J>-- ( 1 Diphtheria »»°" Measles . ••• ,. 1 -' (u . Total deaths from the above x three diseases, 16,006. Infantilo paralysis • »> It-will bo seen that in £ew ]ork, which is regarded as a hotbed of infantile paralysis, 16,000 children died in three years of tho more common ma adies, while onlr 67 died of infantile naralysis: yet the latter is more dreaded ffittracfe much more attention at the presont moment.

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