OUR BABIES.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXIV, Issue 22, 18 September 1912, Page 7

OUR BABIES.

(By Hygeia.) Published under the auspices of the Society for the Health of Women and Children. "It is wiser to put uj> a fence at the top of a precipice than to maintain an ambulance at the bottom." DECAYED TEETH—THE SCOURGE OF CIVILISATION.

A loading feature of the Public Health Department's Health Campaign, now being conducted throughout the .Dominion, is the enforcement of the doctrine that the maintenance of the health of mankind depends primarily and essentially on the strength and fitness of man's own cells and tissues, and that he is not merely permitted to live by being kept free from or immune to the attacks of particular microbes. Or, to put the matter another way, it would scarcely profit man if he should patiently investigate, discover, and banish from the world every disease-producing organism if, glorying more and more in a false sense of security from hostile invasion, he were to allow the structures of his own body to progressively waste and degenerate through disuse and general neglect of the Jaws of . life and healthy living. As Dr. King insists, it. should be our pride to feel that the myriad, cells of our own bodies are sound enough to build us strong and keep us well and to hold their own against dny of the legions of microbes that may come along to do battle with them—that the poisoning of the wells of microscopic enemies is not. in the long run the noblest or safest way of protecting and safeguarding the body of any living being. The Law of Exercise.

In the ease of all warm-blooded animals it is a first law of life that the blood supply to any part of the l>ody is dependent mainly on I the amount of work' 1 f done in the particular part or organ and its neighbourhood. Hence it is that,- when we -work with our hands and' stimulate the palms the circulation and food supply sent to nourish the local rolls is insreased. The outward.and visible,,result of this is the rapid development of a thick, horny layer on the surface—a hard, protective coating analogous to the scales Of a fish or the enamel of teeth. Applying' these considerations to the building of mouth, tongue, jaws, teeth, nose, and throat of a baby, we realise why the Maori had such perfect masticatory and breathing apparatus, and why we, on the contrary, are becoming more and more degenerate, weakly, and subject to every disease that comer, along. The most striking object-les-son that can be presented to the New Zealand child is the skull (particularly the jaws) of the present white New Zealander, with the unworn but decayed teeth, in contrast with the skull of an old Maori whose grinders, well formed, thickly enamelled, worn half down to the gums, remain perfect to the end of life, free from any blemish or speck of decay. This has been the most telling exhibit at Dr. King's lectures, and wnat he has been saying as to the destiny of our race, in this as in other respects, being in the hands of the mothers, is borne out by the following statement of Dr. Underwood's in an able article, which appears in fthe July number of the Nineteenth Century, headed "The Prevalence of Dental! Caries in Modern Civilised Communities."

"The prevalence of decay of the teeth is increasing rapidly, and we must expect an ever-growing degeneracy unless some mighty campaign of a far-reaching character can be organised to bring mothers back to perform the duties of motherhood as faithfully as the females in the rest of the animal world. . . . Decay of the teeth is due principally to the widespread and spreading system of artificial feeding of infants rendered possible by the contrivances of civilised ingenuity and favoured by the decay of the maternal instinct and mammary function, resulting in imperfect infant tissue-for-mation, and consequently of poorlyformed teeth." Other contributing factors are, of course, avoidance of hard dry, food in infancy, over-indulgence in sweets and biscuits, lack of cleanliness, and various unhygienic habits as to fresh air, exercise, etc. Dr. Underwood continues:—

"Decay of the teeth may be arrested by a return to the simpler life in the relations of mother and child, etc. It is certainly impossible to reform the unnatural mother; neither is it possible to confine the divine right of motherhood to natural mothers."