Untitled

King Country Chronicle, Volume VII, Issue 613, 22 October 1913, Page 2

rt-iI oiid Marg&n. _el. ;;oj. Oiii'o? ' of ihs Society. 2 Chc.s-z&vy sitrecS. ! 7>i. S2O. Olik-.? hoar 3, Tuardaya or.u ! Fridcvs, 2.50 to 4 p.m. Hon. Sc.., M I*3 W. H. Parkes, Marinoto, Symondß street. Te!. 2<JO. Nspier. Pluiiket Nurse Donald, Marine Parade. Hon. Sec., Mrs Hector Smith. I^rtings. —Plunket Nurse Purcell. OffrcFof tha Society afc Mr Bate's Pharmacy. -Hon. Sec , Mra T. W. Lewis. Tel. 285. Dannevicke. P'unhet Nurse Wright. Hon. Sec., Mrs Bickford, Bank of New Zealand. THE LONDON CONGRESS. ON INFANT MbRTALITY AND CHILD WELFARE. London, August 31st. it is remarkabie, as I 'ball show later, how little ia being done in England in the direction of bringing the rising generation of doctors abreast of the scientific and practical advances mads in the care of mother and child during the last twenty years and especially during tha lest ten ye&rs. Not only is this true as regards the medical profession, but it is even more true as regards the great mass of the population. The general assumption here in tha Old Country) is that facilities for "Education in Parenthood," as Herbert Spencer put it, era needed only far the submersed or humble, whereas v?hat strikes us most forcibly is the almost universal ignorance and neglect of man by of the simplest essentials for establishing th? fitness of mother and cbil,!. This confronts us at every tr , wherever wo go, not only in the country but also in the great cities, which ought to ne the cctii-re-i oi' light at.-d leading, and most strikingly aa.ong the so-called "educated" and professional classes who should ba retting an example to the rtst of the com»;ur.tly. Or,?, wcnl.i i.-riusine, or instanc?, that by this time thcie would a general con-st-nsua cf .opinion ar;d practice a? to pure sir, suitable fond, adequate exercise, and the f.voi'iacfe of v eil racognised vosies such as tic uai* of the dummy or comforter. Not.ting of the kind —a f«w iastuncea will suffice to show bow hopelessly mislead ing and inconsistent sra the .examples set, even in the highest quarters. DUMMY FOR COMFORTER.

One !:ftemoon a garden party to the International Medical Congress was sivcn at the London Hospital, s:id facilities'were afforded for seeing ove.* the institution. We went to the children's wards., where there werd a dozen or so of babies and to our amazement they wero apparently all provided with "dummies." In usual inatittUlons it is all the other way thus in the "St. Faneras School fir Mothers" a large notice in the hall proclaims that dummies are strictly forbidden; not only are the mothers prevented from using them in the home, but every effort is made to persuade them to give up the abominations outside the institution also. In this same London, only four years ago, John Burns said, emphatically, in bis opening address at the great Tuberculosis Exhibition: — "Now I come to another practical remedy for consumption—that is, the abolition of the "comforter" and the. ' soother." I believe that the comforter has killed its tens of thousands of little children. What is more, doctors tell me that it Euhjects the baby's month and throat to malformations} and is a special cause of bad teeth. . - . Further, the comforter is said to be responsible in many cases for adenoids. ... I would endure the charge of being a bureaucrat with pleasure if with one order 1 could make the comforter a public nuisance and schedule it as a dangerous instrument." I shall write later of the denunciation of the dummy by leading members of the dental profession who attended the International Congress, though th 3 subject never came up for general discussion, simply because there was nobody on the other side. No wonder the mothers are puzzled and bewildered in such matters, and tend to do just as their fancy inclines them, in the absence of any reliable consistent authoritative guidance. DRAPED CRADLES. Returning to the children's warda of ths London Hospital, we found babies in cradles of which the head ends were draped round with curtains, in the absurd way often shown in advertisements, in the illustrated papers, and in fancy catalogues. Subsequently in a noted Baby Hospital in the West End wo found every cradle without exception, draped with pra; ticall" impervious curtains, anu in soma cases these were riravcn round i*ic upner <oot ci no « of ' cia 1" I'houL, u\cs c *. fur a fturtun n d =■ it * 1 i c t \\ "" \ 1 ill r if 1 it t\ 1 ? c 1 l l t 1 1 ] < l

> v 1 r mii nl\( i ! c c If bL, 1 ,3 c 1 I j v Icu s n ucn in ° if it or t ta and night in 'ul ai b'vw i], without any doubt whatever, he puny and sickly, and most likely have measles or Bcarlstina, and r.ot get through it well. Baby will feci wont of freßh air mora than you"" Do I dream, or are we really in the aga of open-air pthisis sanatoria; open-air treatn ent of disease in general; sunbath9 and week-end bungalows, with one or more Bides out? Are we really in the age of Bleeping on verandahs ana balconies? Did our parents really give up curtained fourposter beds because they found they were weakening and debilitating, and do our others and some of our medical advisers stiil countenance a greater muffling and half suffocation of babies? Are there still to bo found, even in New Zealand, women who keep babies alongside them in bed? I^S