JOHN BULL JUNIOR’S FOSTER MOTHER.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXI, Issue 606, 7 December 1909, Page 4

JOHN BULL JUNIOR’S FOSTER MOTHER.

Some quaint humqur was introduced into the proceedings of the Lancashire County Council meeting on the sth Oct., by Dr John Chadwick in submitting the report of the Midwives’ Act Committee, In dealing with the subject of infantile mortality and the declining birth-rate, Dr Chadwick said the importance of the subject could not be exaggerated. Those who had to deal with the subject knew that the condition of a child was influenced by pre-natal conditions. A child wanting to get on, he continued, would not only choose a strong father and mother, but would also go still further back and select a strong, healthy grandfather and a hale and hearty grandmother. (Laughter). According to statistics, Jews enjoyed the lowest infantile mortality in Great Britain, and the Irish the highest birth-rate. Why should Jacob, jun., he asked, have a better chance of surviving ? (Laughter)- Probably it was because Jacob, senr., looked after Rebecca before the child’s birth, and that afterwards Rebecca did her duty to her offspring by giving breast milk. What a contract with English mothers, some of whom could not perform that function, and others who would not perform it. Rather than do their duty they called on the poor old cow to perform the double function of being mother to its own calf and fostermother to John Bull, jun. (Loud laughter). A very bad arrangement for John Bull, because, while the passage of breast milk to the mouth of the infant was natural, short, and safe, the journey of the cow’s milk to the child was unnatural, oiten long, and sometimes dangerous ; ■ hence the great importance now attached to the hygiene of cowsheds. Why Pat was more prolific than John, Taffy, or Sandy he could not say, but the fac* that he was more prolific gave force to the Irishman’s boast in such like terms as these: “Ye talk of your big mills and- workshops and manufactories in Lancashire, Cheshire, and Yorkshire. Shure there isn’t one of them come up to the Lying-in Hospital in Dublin.”