OUR BABIES

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 7, Issue 162, 13 March 1915, Page 7

OUR BABIES

(BY HYGEIA.) Published by request of the Taihape Plunket Nurse Society. THE TYRANNY OF HABITS. At the dawn of life it is easier to mould a child into good haibts than into bad, but once bad habjits have been formed it may be extremely difficult to eradicate them —indeed, in spite of all that we can do, the child may tosei toot only its health and strength, but may even lose its life owing to the persistence of habits which undermine vitality and the resistiveness of the organism*.

One of the mcst striking instances in this connection is what Darwiin tells us as to his experiments with certain insects. I cannot at the moment recall the details, bnt the essential point wasas follows: In Nature the insects in question lived on certain leaves and drew apace—say it was the paper-mul-berry. Darwin started them' on other leaves instead —say lettuce leaves. Once the insets had acquired a" taste for the wrong leaves they would eat nothing else. Nothing would induce them to go back to their natural food, though the wrong food did not nourish them properly, and led invariably to their premature death. My readrs will realise how closely this acrords wjith what may take place in the case cf children who are allowed to drift into the practice of "Eiarth-eating," or other abnormal habits.

The followjirt? concluding remarks quoted from Dr Still further illustrate the subject:

DR STILL ON MORBID HABITS IN CHILDREN. "Stewart H., aged one year and ahalf, was brought because for the last two months he had taken to eating mud, hearthstone, bits of brick, soap, cr 'anything he can get hold of.' He was particularly fond of the white plaster off toy horses.

"His appetite for normal food was bad. The bowels had been constipated, and qicasionally, eb'jvng sucjh things as those mentioned, he retched. "The child was very irritable, and during the persistence cf the dirt-eat-ing habit he had bqjun to sleep badly, talking in his sleep and starting up in terror at night. He was intelligent, and showed no signs cf disease, except seme rickets. Three months later he was taken to Scotland, with the resullt that his general health improved greatly, and his appetite became good, and he lost his cravinjg for unnatural food altogether. "Mud and mortar seem to be special favourites with these children. Coal, cinders, and gravel were also mentiond in some of my cases. In nine out of my 14 cases the habit began in the second year of life. In one only it began in the first year (at eight months); in two it began in the fourth year.

Now, what is the significance of the curious perversiion of appetite. As I have mentioned, there was nothing in any of the cases to which I have referred to suggest any mental dieficincy. Imbeciles often show a similar habit of dirt-eating, but iin them it is less strange, for it is associated usually with an extreme degree of mental deficiency.

"Some light is thrown upon the point by the disorders with which pica is associated. It goes, I think, in the majority of cases with definite indications, cf the 'nervous' temperament. One child T ■ had seen a few months earlier for spasmodic nodding, another a few ic,c«nth« after the pica ceased wag attended fcr wetting the bed, another subsequently developed stuttering and somnambulism; others, like the case I have mentioned, shew an abnormal passionateness or excitability.

"No doubt these nervous symptoms are aggravated by more or less digestive disturbance set up by the abnormal material eaten, but I think that the development cf other nervous disorders in some cases after the pica has entirely ceased, and the family history in others go to prove that the nervousness is partly at least cause rather than effect.

"In almost all cases the appetite for ordinary food is extremely poor—in fact, it is often this rather than the dirt-eating which excites the mother's anxiety. The abdomen is usually large, the stools sometimes contain mucus, and the bowels are costive or in egular. "'lt is natural enough that such symptoms should be induced by the indigestible substances eaten; but in some cases it has seemed to me clear that there was digestive disturbance before this habit began, and I suspect that this is so in the majority of cases, and that the subsequent discomfort, hardly felt as such perhaps by the child, plays some part in exciting the habit of dirt-eating in a nervous child. Thi s is confirmed, I think, by the effect of treatment. The duration of the ,haMt oft'en lasts months}; '3r even some years, if no special measures are taken for its cure.

TREATMENT. "The first esslential in treatment is to prevent the child obtaining the dirt, coal, mortar, or other injurious substance for which it craves; the second is to improve .its general health, especially its digestiion. "Thiers is no part of the treatment mere valuable than a few weeks at a bracing seaside place, or, if this is not attainable, at some hig'h^standirig;

breezy, inland country place. At the same time, it will be necessary to aid digestion by the most careful cirating, and care must be' taken that the feed is net such as to set up fermantatoin in the bowels, or to keep up a mucous catarrh by its irritating residue. I need not repeat here what I have already said elsewhere on the subject of feeding and indigstion. These cases of pica call for careful adaptation cf the diet to the digestive capacity of the particular child." (G'ao. Fredeiric Still;, M|A., M.D., F.R.C.P., Professor of Diseases of Children, King's College, London.)