OUR BABIES.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VII, Issue 531, 8 January 1913, Page 3

OUR BABIES.

, (By Hygeia). j Published under tlie auspices of the Society for the Health of Women and Children. " It is wiser to put up a fence at the top. of a precipice than to maintain an ambulance at the bottom."

THE CURSE OP SUMMER,

While Summer time is delightful to all of ua and its warm days and bright sunshine tempt /people into the open air, and thus tend to banish "colds," sore throata, and "chest affections" of the damper, chillier seasons of the year—while this health gjving effect of summer, on young and, old alike is .recognised in every temperate region of the world, it is also found that summer kills far more babies than any other season of the year. Why is this? Why should not summer be the safest instead of the most dangerous time of year for infants? The reason is not far to seek. Most babies are fed on liquid food which is specially liable to ferment in warm weather. Milk becomes infested with microDes; in other words, Eoes had and becomes poisonous, more v readily than any other food, and if we are lot careful in the selection of a milkman it may have gone bad in warm weather before reaching the home. So long as an infant is suckled,, and the mother is not only regular, cleanly, and careful in her habits, but hlso gives the baby all his simple primary rights (outing, ; fresh air, ,sunlight, exercise* etc.), there is no safer season than summer. But, however careful the mother may be as to general hygiene, summer is dangerous, and often fatal, if there is, any carelessness in artificial feeding (whether, resorted to in the early months or. coming in the natural course later on at weaning or afterwards), simply because microbes grow apace in warm weather if milk is'nbt properly attended to. SUMMER DIARRHOEA. . Why should diarrhoea pingle out babies and calves and leave the rest of nursing more or less exempt from this special curse of summer? In warm = weather the young of horses, pigs, .cats, and the rest are almost uniformly healthy, while calves in all directions are victims to "scouring," and few babies escape the same scourge under the name of "summer diarrhoea." / Why does nature single out calves and babies? Calves are sacrificed because man takes the cow'a milk for himself, and feeds the calf out of a bucket. The baby is sacrificed because thfe 1 mother's breast is denied to it also, and improper food, contaminated with germs, is substituted for the pure, perfect, blood warm, living stream direct from the proper source.

The important practical question which we have to face at the present moment is this:—Are ill-health and diarrhoea inevitable during summer time for calves and babies who cannot be suckled?

Certainly not! In both caseß the trouble arises not from the mere fact of artificial feeding, but because proper care ia not exercised to secure, suitable food and to prevent fermenta- ' tion. For babies, humanised milk ' supplies by far the nearest approach to the mother's milk, and if Kept cool and given according to the directions contained in the instructions issued by the society, there would be little risk of disease. - Even with breast feeding a baby may suffer from summer diarrhoea, but immediate suitable treatment of such infantf, or of those who have been judiciously fed by artificial means, soon bring 3 about recovery in the great maiority of cases. Among babies who have been improperly fed, on the other hand, the risk of death from an attack of diarrhoa is very great indeed, and lasting debility is often left where the baby does not actually succumb. DEATH TOLL OP DIARRHOEA. Professor Budin showed that the number of artificially-fed babies who died in Paris per week was about twenty in winter, but that in midsummer the deaths rose to almost two hundred and sixty per week. This is very strikingly shown in a diagram given page forty of the Society's pamphlet, "What Baby Needs." , f A rise in the death rate among infants similar to the above occurs in New Zealand during warm weather varying with {he locality and the heat of the particular summer. Knowing the cause, the disease is one of the most easily preventable, and the mother who allows her baby to suc- v cumb during the next few months should feel, in nine cases out of ten, that she has herself to blame. It is not nature or Providence that inflicts the curse of summer diarrhoea, but the mother herself. That this is literally and absolutely true will be realised by anyone consulting the Paris diagram, which show that over 1000 babies died in six weeks when the weather was warmest. Among' breast fed babies the death rate for the same period averaged only 20 per week. The deaths that did take place in either class were mainly the result of ignorance and carelessness (especially careless feeding of mother and child, the use of the longtube feeder, lack of fresh air and exercise, irregular habits, failure to keep the breasts and the clothing.covering them ..clean, and use of dummy or comforter for the baby). During the same three or four fatal summer months scarce" ly a death from diarrhoea occurred among the babies whose mothers were availing themselves of rational advice tendered at the four creches then established in Paris on modern lines. About half of these more fortunate babies were suckled and the rest were bottle fed with milk supplied at the special "Babies' Milk Depot." in the ( provinces a similar result has been achieved. Thus Dr Dufour, the pioneer in > Normandy of the rational care of babies, including the use pf .bumanised milk,.

shows that while the - death : rate among infants averaged 55 for the four principal towns, the death rate among babies whose mothers attended the depots and got pruper advice and food was lea than three per cent.— in other words, only one-twentieth of the mortality-which took place among the babies whose mothers persisted in going their own Way in spite of warnings and advice. " SUMMER IS-ON US. It is hoped, now we are reaching the critical summer period for babies, that mothers in our midst will avail themselves of the printed advice issued by. the society. The services of the Plunket Nurse are always \availabla for any mother who desires advice or help.. Nothing can bo more senseless and abaurd than the way in which women subject their babies to wrong feeding until they b'ecome ill; and then frantically cum to soma other method. If they treated their offspring properly during the moat risky period of life — namely, the first few months —the rest would usually be plain sailing, and they would save the baby from an" infinity of barm and escape unending trouble and regrets for themselves

Take Tonking's Ilinseed Emulsion, and stop coughing now ; Bottles 1/6, 2/6, 4/6 r at Chemists and Stores. .