OUR BABIES.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VIII, Issue 698, 26 August 1914, Page 2

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." WHEN SHOULD SPOON-FEEDING BEGIN? The following letter, just received, puts this question in another form: — "I should be obligad if you would say in "Our Babiaß" column at what age a child should be weaned from a bottle and spoon-fed. Children usually have no teeth fit for mastication till at least 18 months old; but some think they should be spoon fed sooner. —lnterested." REPLY The question asked is really very important, and one cannot answer it without making clear how necessary it is to ensure plenty of exercise for the mouth and the surrounding organs throughout the whola of babyhood. Mistaken Advice—To' show how Widespread is the lack°of appreciation of this fundamental requirement, I may mention thai some' yearß ago an association of ablu and earnest woman submitted for our consideration a carefully-drawn-up leaflet on t e rearing of infants, in which it was laid don that, where artificial feeding had to be resorted to, spoon feeding should. be preferred to bottle feeding even in the case ot the youngest baby. The reason given for this mistaken advice was that th 9 uss of india rubber teats, etc., introduced the risk of germs, and spoon .feeding was held to be in all respects safer and cleaner. Indeed, I have often heard mothers and nurses discussing such points without taking into account the question of exercise at all, though active exercise at meal times is even more important for babies than it is for adults. Them is almost no work for the baby during spoon feeding with milk or pap, whereas natural suckling not only necessitates really hard work for the parts immediately involved, but it impels all the other organs of the body, to a stats of healthy,, exhilarating activity. We shall only have to go into the fields a few weeks hence to have this point forced on our attention by the new born lambs that will be inßtinct with life and intense activity to the tips of their rapidly-wagging tails as they bunt .their heads against the udders of the ewes,and tug at the teats in the act of suckling.

However, I need not expatiate on this matter, because it is much bet ter conveyed on page 18 in "Feeding and Care of Baby" than lean hope to do. by a mere vernal description. The three contrasting illustrations suffice to convince anyone who will take the trouble to rsad the following descriptive foot note, which says:—

"Another point, and one of extreme importance, seen in this picutre is the muscular activity of the suckled child—the kind of alertness which we notice in all healthy young animals at ths breast, and which can scarcely escape attention in the happy rapid tail-wagging of puppies, lambs, foals, calves, etc. Even when the nursling has settled down to calm, steady sucking the pulse, the rise in the blood pressure, and the universal increase of nervous and muscular tona —in fact, the stimulus of natural suckling as is radiated to the whole system, and causes a quickened life in every organ and tissue to the uttermost parts of the body. Contrast this with (c), where the baby, half asleep, lazily and passively imbibes its milk through a long tube feeder, which offers no resistance to tug at, and gives the baby no chance of opening wide its mouth and exercising its jaws as it does when munching the mother's breast. Natural suckling is not confined to the nipple; the baby's jaws work tip on to the breast itself as it nuzzles in and pushes and tug ats the organ.", Page 146 of the Society's book says-, —Again we must insist that perfect capacious jawß and sound, beautiful teeth cannot be built without fulfilling all the simple and universal requisites for health throughout bayhood and childhood —especially ample daily exercise of the mouth organs. The mouth ia indeed a great primal "driving station," whence the nerve fibres carry impulses to the nerve centres, which quicken the life and activity of every tissue of the body. When the jaws are doing natural, honesr, hard work the whole of the rest of the organism is impelled to activity—the heart pumps quicker and more forcibly, the pressure of blood in the arteries rises, and its stream flows more rapidly even in the very finger lips; at the same time the digestive juices are poured out freely, not only into the mouth, but also into tte stomach and bowels, as the result of messages transmitted from the mouth to the nerve centres and out again when we are busily engaged in mastication. Apart altogether from the consideration of the building of the teeth and jaws, active "mouth exercise" is tfeus necessary for the nutrition, growth, and health of every organ of the body. "Feeding exercise" is the mosc primitive, fundamental, and essential of all forms of exercise. A horse fed mainly on hard food (and reasonably treated in other respects) becomes the ideal of strength and "fitness." Feed the same horse with soft mashes, made from similar food materials, and hj« will become soft and "out of condition," simply because his whole organism will then lack the primary stimulation of daily, normal, active exercise which formerly he had to devote to crunching the oafs, etc —activities which are not called forth when dealing with food provided ready ground and softened —food on which the work has been already done by millstones and mashing outside the animal body. The same .applies to ourselves, particularly to the young, who Bre always nearest to nature. We need tbe exercise of active majtica-

tion or suckling, and the only effective means of enßuring thiß is to start training at the dawn of life. Never let a healthy infant take a meal on which he is hot compelled to do active work in the form of suckling or chewing. 1 thoroughly appreciate*the.- apparent force of our correspondent's very natural remark as to the inefficiency of the teeth when only a few have been cut, though'this should not bo so at 18 months, because at about 18 months the normal child should be provided with the finest masticatory apparatus that he will ever have proportionate to his size.

THE PRIMARY USE OP THE TONGUE

However, the discussion of the efficiency of the teeth is misleading in this connection. What we have to realise is that, as Dr Pickeill, Professor-of Dentistry at Otago Uni- : versify, insists, the tongue is not primarily a talking oragn," but a "suckling and masticatory organ." If the tongue is not given an hour or more of hard labour evey day it will not gow to its full size, and the jaws and roof of the mouth, which the tongue is intended to mould and form, will tend to ba puny, while the cavity of the nose, situated just above the roof of the mouth, will also be smaller than it should be. I shall discuss this matter further next week in order to make quite clsar how a single fundamental error, Buch as the premature spon feeding of a baby, tends to produce life long strucutral defectß, not only of the feeding apparatus, but of the breathing apparatus, and the whole body—indeed, how it would make a child unduly liable to suffer from indigestion, colds, adenoids, consumption, etc,