OUR BABIES

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 545, 24 December 1928, Page 4

OUR BABIES

By

Hygeia.

Published under the auspices of the Royal New Zealand Society for the Health of Women and Children j (Plunket Society). “It is wiser to put up a fence at ! the top of a precipice than to main- | tain an ambulance at the bottom.” j COLDS AND CATCHING COLDS Having lately been asked to deal with the matter of babies’ colds and their prevention, we shall quote from several articles which vrere published some years ago. They are specially appropriate just now, when winter is approaching fast. We are free of immediate anxiety with regard to infantile diarrhoea, but now begins the season when we find babies all over the country suffering from coughs and colds, sore throats, bronchitis, and pneumonia. “These diseases pull them down, damage their whole breathing apparatus, give them adenoids, prevent the proper development of their chests, and tend to make them catch cold again and again throughout childhood and afterwards. “This appears to be the most serious side of the matter —the damaging and weakening of the whole organism, through lack of a little forethought and common sense on the part of parents and their failure to get a grip of what is necessary in the way of prevention. High Winter Death-rate “But there is another side to tfee question of letting infants catch colds, namely, the large share which it plays in piling up the death-rate. Turn to the annual statistics of any country, and you will find that, -while children die of diarrhoea in summer, they mostly die from colds and chest affections in winter, and it should always be borne in mind that a very large number of those who do not actually succumb in infancy through catching colds fall a prey later on to tuberculosis. “All this miserable train of evils would be avoided if parents could only be brought to realise that prevention is easily achieved, and that it can be achieved in one way only, namely, by giving every child its natural rights of abundance of pure, cool, fresh air, plenty of exercise and outing in the open air and sunlight, avoidance of coddling in warm, stuffy rooms at any time, avoidance of excessive clothing, and, above all things, avoidance of carelessness as to clothing. It is difficult to school oneself to speak with patience on these matters. “Daily one sees little children taken from warm beds in warm kitchens (where they never ought to be) out Into the open air with bare arms, bare legs, and totally Insufficient wrappings—and then the mother, finding that her baby catches cold, blames Providence or the cold, pure air for the results of her own stupidity. Again, look at the children placed in draughts on the floor, or just inside an offcn doorway, or, worse still, propped up on a pillow in front of the fire just after a warm bath to ‘toast the toes,’ as shown and described on page 67 ‘Feeding and Care of Baby.’ Common Colds: Should They be Common ? “Common colds are generally regarded as mysterious, accidental, and more or less unavoidable visitations of Providence, in reality they are nothing of the kind. They are no more mysterious or inevitable than constipation or diarrhoea, and they are precisely analogous to such fevers as pneumonia, pleurisy, measles, or typhoid fever. “Common colds are not merely like tevers; they are actually fevers. They are always due to an invasion of the body by millions of microbes, which breed with amazing rapidity in the nose and upper air passages, and quickly poison the blood and affect more or less every tissue of the body, causing the victim to feel hot and cold by turns, fevered, thirsty, and sore, sick, dull, languid and miserable.

“Hostile microbes are always liable to be lurking about the mouth, nose, and throat, and if someone introduces a specially virulent strain of germ into a home it is apt to make a successful campaign against the whole household, if the family happens to live under conditions which render the tissues of their bodies feeble fighters in general and specially inefficient to combat this particular class of organism. In other words, they happen to be people who habitually live in warm, stuffy rooms, tail to fortify their bodies daily by cold sponging or bathing, followed by rubbing and active exercise, and who do not avail themselves of the healthy, vitalising effects of open air and sunlight. “Parents could keep their children strong and almost proof against disease if they would only conform to the simplest primary laws and needs of healthy living set down as ‘What Every Baby Needs’ on pages 1 and 2 of the society’s book ‘Feeding and Care of Baby,’ and amplified so many times in these columns. But, unhappily, there are people who won’t take the trouble—won’t take any trouble—until the baby is ill; then, too late, they are ready to spend or to do anything in order to cure what could so easily have been prevented.

Picking fruit, making jam, slicing beans—in fact, most of the things the busy housewife does with her own hands —stain the fingers and take away the beauty of hands and nails. Stained fingers should never be neglected. Pumice-stone, as a cleanser, should be avoided, for. although it certainly removes the stain, it coarsens and hardens the skin and makes it liable to a deeper and more lasting stain next time. A better way is to rinse the hands in cold water immediately after the handling of any fruit or vegetable (with onions this will do much to remove odour as well as stain) and scrub the nails with a soft brush. Then rub the hands with half a lemon and dig the finger-tips right Into the fruit. The lemon-juice really removes the stain and makes the hands white.