OUR BABIES.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 7, Issue 222, 8 June 1915, Page 3

OUR BABIES.

BY HYGEIA.)

(Published by the request of the Talhape Plunket Society.) THE NATIONAL IMPORTANCE OF TEACHING MOTHERCRAFT. The following is a summary of a very striking address given by the Rev. E. S. Grey at the annual meeting of the Dunedin Branch of the Society for the Health of Women and Children: — THE WAR, AND WHAT IT MEANS. The colossal struggle in which the Empire is now engaged is of such immeasurable moment that matters of merely personal and . private importance are being relegated to the subsi diary place which they should occupy. Even public questions, unrelated to the present stress, have lost their interest. Tire need and peril of the nation are making their appeal to every lover of his country.

It is much more than a conflict between the visible forces of Europe. It is the culmination of a long process, dominated on the one hand by the materialistic spirit which has found its ultimate expression in German militarsm, and, on the other, by the higher ideals of humanity represented in this conflict by our own nation and its Allies. It is in the end a struggle for the establishment and re-statement of moral values; and at this juncture there is no place for any but patriots who would stand or fall, nor for organisations which arc not prepared to make some definite contribution for this great end. A Test Question.

This Society welcomes such a test. The bi-oadest plank of its platform, laid down at the inception of the movement, was never so appropriate as at this hour—“ For the sake of women and children, for the advancement of the Dominion, and for the honour of the. Empire. 1 ’ —(Applause.) The choicest manhood of the Empire is being lavishly, offered on the altar of sacrifice. The steady stream will be maintained until victory rests with our arms; but it will be victory at immeasurable cost —a nation depleted of much of its noblest manhood.

Other societies are using all their machinery and influence to alleviate the pressure and peril of the present moment. This society, with a zeal born of the needs of the hour, is urging, as never before, the vital importance of its fundamental aim, the obligation of enlightened and intelligent womanhood, so that the brave men who have fallen may be replaced by a race born of such mothers that the strength and chivalry which are crowning our name may be reproduced and even increased. The Society stands for the improvement of the race by education in the most momentous work in which woman could be engaged —viz., mothercraft. Our women are the repository of the nation yet unborn, and the paramount obligation of the present is to see that the future race was well-born and wellgrown. Infantile Death Rates. Evidence which abundantly justifies the existence of the Society increases as the years pass. Ourjsity occupies the-proud position of having the lowest

infant death rate in the world. From a chart submitted by. Dr. Truby King to the Infant Mortality Congress .in London, it was shown that the percentage of deaths varied from 28 per cent, in Petrograd, down through Vienna, Berlin, Liverpool, Manchester, London, and Stockholm, to Hi per cent., while Dunedin had steadily reduced its rate of 8 per cent, the average for the years from 1900 to 1907, dow-n to as low' as 4 per cent, for 1912-13. There is only one possible explanation. The reduction synchronises exactly with the .operations of the Society.—(Applause.) At the sam e time the rate for th ewhole Dominion has decreased, doubtless owing to the influence of the teaching of the Society. Branches are not at work in many part of the Dominion, and we may confidently expect a steady general reduction. This in itself would more than justify the existence of the society. What the Babies are Worth.

It is a national question. Some 1500 infants die every year in this land. Authorities are agreed that at least half of these could easily be saved. Dr, King has pointed out that the value of an average young adult to the State, if represented in money, was, on a moderate basis, £3OO. The savfhg of , even half of these children would represent a capital value every year of nearly a quarter of a millon pounds. This is unmistakably a national matter, and it s being recognised as such.

What England and America are Saying and Doing.

Almost the last isue of the British Medical Journal states that the education of the mother is a factor of primary importance to the nation, ami that mothercraft is one of the chief, if not, indeed, the chief, industry of the nation., ■ .

America is systematically attacking the problem, and the experience there agrees with our own. The New York City Health Department lays it down as an axiom that baby health is purchasable, and a community can determine, within natural limitations, its death rate. In New York for four years before 1908 the death rate of infants under one year was from 160 to 169 per 1000. From 1908 to 1911 it was reduced to 125 per 1000. In 1915 it was further reduced to 111, and in 1912 still further lowered to 105. thereby‘placing New York in the first rank among the larger cities of the world in the work of baby-saving.—(Applause.) The reduction synchronised with special efforts made in the establishment of milk stations and the systematic education of mothers in mothercraft. In one borough, Manhattan, the reduction in supervised cases of babies under one month was as much as 32 per cent. Of 19,000 babies supervised by the nurses of the Division of Child Hygiene, similar to our Plunket nurses, the death rate was only 1.4 per cent., and the cost to the city only 2/- per month for each baby. It was the best investment that city ever made. One of the leading medical authorities of i New York, at a Health Congress in that city, uttered words which should be written deep on the public conscience throughout the world: “Infant morbidity and infant mortality as recorded to-day are a gross injustice to God and to mankind. They represent the great-

est loss to manKlua to-aay, and it is little shor t of criminal negligence which permits them to exist.” And there is universal agreement that the most important factor in the prevention of excessive mortality is natural feeding.”' Dr. Davis, of Boston, after exhaustive inquiry, discovered that while one in 30 breast-fed children died before one year old, of those who were bottlefed one in every five died. What the Plunket Society is,Txying to do. The Society stands for the education of the mother in the obligation and possibility of natural feeding. There is a danger, however, that all the emphasis might be placed upon the saving of infant life. Important as that is, it Is overshadowed by the immeasurable difference which would be made if all the children who survived were given their birthright—the right of the best health, as the result of the best food and care. The present crisis has emphasised that fact as it has probably nevpr been emphasised before. Forty per cent, of our young men who are offering for the front are being rejected as physically unfit! (Mr. Grey’s address will bo concluded next week).