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THE ONLY COMMON SENSE WAY OF 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 the commonest remarks made by mothers in respect to their bottle fed infants, when advised to change to humanised milk, is—"l shall make no change ao long as what he is getting continues to agree with him." No matter how demonstrably wrong in its nature and components the 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 grave the risks of debility and disease, the mother tends to hold stubbornly to her first decision change as long as baby remains healthy." She thinks this is unanswerable common sensa, though a moment's reflection shows the absurdity of such an attitude. It means nothing more nor l6es than this: until the mother has damaged her baby so greatly that it beginß 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 common sense way of, feeding a baby, and that is the way of nature —the Almighty's way. Failing this, the baby should be 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 patient 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 come 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 which cannot bold out against disease. Their infants may take prizes at baby shows, but they will not prove winners in the race of life. For the long distance contest good muscle, sound teeth, perfect digestion, and healthy active heart, lungs, rabin, and nerves are of the first importance, and these things are not to be expected in babies fed contrary to the lawß and provisions of nature.

Mothers give the digestive organs of the baby credit for being abls to transmute almost anything—the milk of an? animal, condensed milk, patent vegetable foods, etc. —into sound flesh and blood. Indeed, there is much to support the fallacy. You can keep a baby alive, and even pet 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 Hudderefield, said that a lecture given in Edinburgh some years ago:— "It is a well-known fact that dome babies you cannot kill- You can rob them of their mother's milk, feed them with unsatisfactory milk, feed them with unsatisfactory milk through a long tube out of a dirty feeding bottle, give them all kinds of odds ai,d ends, bread, chipped potatoes, fried fish, and even pickles and patent foodd. yet they persist in living. But this regimen will effectually dispose of most babies, and the few that Burvive are ricketty, poor creatures that will probably be of no UHe in the world to themselves or to anybody el»e 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 treatment, the child wuuld have stood a good chance of being a centenarian; with such an initial vitality, and such power of resisting adverse conditions, there Jh nothing that such a child could not have done. The case is an extreme one, but it illustrates the connection that I want to establish between the life arid health of children. Under the extremely bad conditions that I have hinted at, probably 99 out of every 100 would die. Improve the conditions and you would soon reduce the rate to 39 or 40 per cent.; but thia would indicate that the 60 or 70 survivors had passed through a severe struggle to maintain existence, and would be each mure or less subject to fall by subsequent attacks on their vitality. Improve the conditions again, and you would reduce the death rate to, Bay, 10 per cent., and the 90 survivors would all be better far than any of the 60 or 70 survivors who have pulled through the adverse conditions to which the 30 or 40 had Buccumbed. There is no question that the death rate of children indicates most clear ly and definitely the health conditions of child life. I take it that every lost life points to many lives injured, and I will for the present state aB 'my assumption that every infant life lost is wastage of life in itself, and indicates further wastage of health amongst the survivors"

Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/KCC19130416.2.29

Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka

King Country Chronicle, Volume VII, Issue 559, 16 April 1913, Page 6

Word count
Tapeke kupu
844

THE ONLY COMMON SENSE WAY OF FEEDING BABIES. King Country Chronicle, Volume VII, Issue 559, 16 April 1913, Page 6

THE ONLY COMMON SENSE WAY OF FEEDING BABIES. King Country Chronicle, Volume VII, Issue 559, 16 April 1913, Page 6

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