ARTIFICIAL INCUBATION FOR INFANTS.

Kumara Times, Issue 2046, 20 March 1883, Page 3

ARTIFICIAL INCUBATION FOR INFANTS.

There is a good time coming for mothers, and for the matter of that for fathers, too, who have hitherto had their happy slumbers disturbed by the exigencies of that little tyrant the baby. It is no less than a scheme of artificial incubation for infants. Once they enter the world in the usual way, all trouble is to be at an end, The maternal duties are henceforward confined to the superintendence of a machine, the exact counterpart to the artificial incubators for chickens, which are in full force on Mr Scott's poultry farm at Sawyer's Bay, and which are in universal use among the fellahs of Egypt. It " is an artificial box with a glass slide, furnished woollen bed, and kept at a temperature of 80 degrees by suitable means. The child is placed in this with a nursing bottle." And then all goes well; it sleeps and grows and gives no trouble whatever, and when ready to be placed on its legs is as strong as a young rhinoceros. There is no nonsense about it—there is the testimony of Dr. Tavernier, in Wednesday's Daily Times. He has actually tried it in a Foundling Hospital, at Paris, on three hundred and sixty infants, who averaged sixteen pounds weight each when put in the boxes, and six months after were turned out an average weight of twenty-four pounds. Only one died. All the rest learned to walk within a week after leaving the. incubator, and most have since learned to talk. I recommend the system to Mr Titchener, of the Industrial School, as well as to all over-burdened mothers. There is hope for our marriageable females yet, if only the disabilities of baby's first year could be removed from the category of unpleasant contingencies on the marriage state. That is probably one answer to the question, "Why don't the men propose 1" Parental affection is very beautiful, but on the male side it don't begin to work much till the little darlings are past the " muling and puking " age, and begin to get interesting.—« Civis" in the Otago Witness.