OUR BABIES.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VIII, Issue 678, 17 June 1914, Page 7

OUR BABIES.

Published under the 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." 1 .1 BREAST-FEEDING. We note with satisfaction that the iteration and re-iteration of the paramount importance of breast-feeding appears to be steadily bearing fruit. The Plunket Nurseß report that the number of mothers who are entirely breast-feeding their . babies has increased threefold this year. This is mainly due to the large number of expectant mothers who get in touch' with the nurses months before the birth of their habiea. The nurses are able by good counsel with regard to exercise, regularity, suitable food, etc., to ensure better prospects for mother and child, and, naUrally. the mother continues to seek the nurse's aid after the baby's birth. THE STRUGGLE EOR REFORM. We make no apclogy for extracting from last year's report »the following summary of some of the main points for which we are still fighting, because these reforms cannot bo too strongly impressed on all members of the Society. "Freßh Air. Exercise, Etc.—Along with the strenuous advocacy of breast-feeding, we must continue to make every effort to direct the general Lygience care of children into proper channels. Fortunately, appreciation of the advantages of pure, cool, fresh air, exercise, suitable clothing, and the other essentials needs of babyhood is steadily growing. "Special Advances in Baby-feed-ing.—ln addition to the above, the most notable special advances making for the well-being of breast-fed and bottle-fed alike throughput the Dominion are: —

1. The widespread adoption of systematic clock-like regularity in the feeeding of babies. 2. The extension of the intervals between feedings throughout the early months to three hours instead of feeding every two hours. 3. The entire abandonment of night-feeding—that is. between, say, 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. 4. The early use of hard, dry, or tough foods needing mastication. "The extreme opposition which each of these reforms has met with when advocated by the Society only a few years ago are gradually dying out; bat many grandmothers and nurses of the old school prove hard to convince. Stranger still, the majority of the books for mothers coming to us from the Old Country are aa conservative as ever, and tend to perpetuate many of the worst errors of the Victorian era. Obivious of the advances made during the last fifteen years, in American and the Continent, in the feeding and care of children, they continue to ignore and even condemn system or precision in the modiGcetion of milk for babies, and Btill blindly advocate two hourly intervals and night-feedings. Last, and, strangest of all—in Bpite of the writing on the wall in the shape of feeble jaws, decayed teeth, and adenoids—they go on recommending the pap-feeding of infants, and utterly ignore the need of exercise for mouth, jaws, and teeth at the earliest age. "Twenty years of earnest and masterful proteßt and appeal againßt 'papfeeding' by such men as Dr Harry Campbell and Dr Sirn Wallace have scarcely affected the advice which continues to be scattered broadcast, and one cannot wonder that Dr Sim Wallace, speaking at the gretf Dental Conference at Birmingham, should have exclaimed almoßt in despair to his audience: 'What can we dentists hope to effect when it takes so long for the ascertained knowledge of our profession to percolate through to the medical profession ' " We can only regret that bo far there are no signs of any genaral tendency to modernise British practice, and that what we quota above from our last year's report is equally applicable to-day.

gin confirmation of this, a few points may suffice: — 1. The Dental Record, London, in a highly appreciative review of the Society's "Feeding and Care of Baby," specially welcomes the book, because it "marks s distinctly new departure" in advocating due exercise for mouth, jaws and teeth in babyhood, and in recognising that "erroneous method cf feeding during infancy" are prime factors in the causation of feeble jaws, decayed tee.tb, and adenoids. 2. T.io latest article for . mothers received from Home —an article on "Suckling," bearing high English medical sanction—says: "There should be one long interval of rest during the night. Some doctors advise four hours, some six, . some eight, according to their special views . . but, whatever interval may be ordered, strict obedience should again be displayed by the mother." This surely implies that even four hours ia to be 'regarded as a "long night interval," though in reality it is extremely short when viewed in the light of modern knowledge, as we shall show presently. The above is absolutely typical of the spirit that pervades tho literature for mothera and nurses that still floods our shores from the outside world —no adequate appeal to the intelligence of womer.; no credit for power of understanding on their part; no inkling of the existence of simple, definite, consistent laws wnich would serve for the safe guidance of all mothers, rich and poor alike. Of course, we all know that the conditions of modern civilisation have carried us far beyond the stage where instinct or even tradition

would serve to safeguard mother and child. Indeed, laisser faire, and the handing on of traditional error have landed the world with infantile death rates of which everyone now is ashamed, and with defects and disease of the rising generation which we can no longer cope with. We cannot let matters stand as they are we must act. As Herbert Spsncer says: "Is it not monstroua that the fate of a new generation should be left to the chances of unreasoning custom, impulse, fancy—joined with the suggestions of ignorant nurses and the prejudiced counsel of grandmothers?" Yet the question might almost be raised whether it would not be preferable to leave mothers to mere instinct and tradition rather" r thnn hand on traditional errors, with thn added sanction of seeming scientific authority. We sre assured that the highest trained intelligence of the medical profession, wherever it has been brought to bear, along with due practical observation and experience, whether in the New World "or in the Old, has proved conclusively in the last ten or fifteen years that the feeding tables for infants drawn up and circulated by physicians last century were hopelessly t> wrong; yet it ia these same antiquated and obsolete tables that mothers are still being ordered to follow blindly and obediently! Our faith is rudely shaken when told that one doctor lays down the time needed for rest and- unbroken sieep for mother and child as four hours, and another as eight hours; that one always orders ten feedings in the 24 hours as the proper standard, while another says it is a mistake to give more than five or at. most six, urIses for exceptional reasons.