THE BABY-KILLER DRESS

Dominion, Volume 13, Issue 37, 7 November 1919, Page 4

THE BABY-KILLER DRESS

Tear by year, thanks' to (ihe existence of clinics and other aids, tho world is. glowing wiser.on tho subject of hjjw best to rear a nation's best asset; still there is a good deal of real ignorauco in regard to the subject.. According to a well-known doctor, the infantile death-rate is sent up morequickly by over-dressing, or wrong dressing. than from any other' cause.- : The doctor declares that contrary, to general opinion, it is not chemical impurities npr lack of oxygen which most affect? people who inhabit crowded chambers, but. the actual, tempera turo of the air. Ho claims that tho victims of the Black Hole of Calcutta did not die of suffocation, but from, heat-strokel. Babies with a heap of clothes around them suffer in tlieso same conditions, Plato found it necessary in'his time to condemn tho practico of swaddling', and Darwin instances tho .case of the;, naked savage standing in the cold sleet with a nude baby in her arms, and data offered by him show tlmt these people had to prac-. tico infanticide to keep the population down to the level of the food supply. Without resorting, to such drastic measures, it is for tho general benefit of. all babies that they be lightly, lint warmly, clad. The old-fashioned method of loading, a poor innocent down with shirts and flannels and binders and long robes, orer-cloaks, and shawls has happily pass ed; but'there is_ a further reform to be nchieved in this direction.. Hygieniclothing commends itself to all intelligent modern lnuliiers, and the less the nnmbei-of garments for baby the better, provided they arc suitable in quality and cut. That the reform means less work for a mother who is probably maidless is an aspect of the subject not at all irrelevant.