OUR BABIES.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 7, Issue 240, 30 June 1915, Page 3

OUR BABIES.

(BY HYGEIA.) (Published by request of the Taihapa Plunket Society.) - ROYAL RECOGNITION FOR THE PLUNKET SOCIETY. At the last monthly meeting of the Central Council of the Soeiety, held in Dunedin, the President announced that word had been received through the Governor that his Majesty the King had conferred on the Society the honour of being styled "The Royal New Zealand Society for the Health of "Women and Children." This mark of confidence and encouragement would have been welcome at any time, but its arrival at this period of national stress and peril rof.kes Eoyal recognition of the Society's work all the more gratifying. Small Beginnings.

Exactly 10 years ago--two years before the founding of the Society—Dr. Truby King was asked by the President of the New Zealand Parmers' Union (Mr. ,now Sir, J. G. Wilson) to give an address at their annual general meeting in Wellington, with a view to evoking practical' interest in the establishment of rural education throughout the Dominion.

Lord Plunket, as Governor, presided. The subject chosen was "The Feeding of Plants and Animals."

The address was mainly taken up with a consideration df the essential scientific and practical problems nvolved in the successful rearing of plant' and animals, and the need for soundly grounding our rural population in these matters. The concluding section, dealing with the.highest aspect of the problem, alone concerns us-here. ; Feeding, of Children. Dr. King said:

If it is necesary to be guided by the laws of Nature, and to be systematic and accurate in the feeding of plants and the lower animals, ? such care is surely doubly incumbent on us in the rearing of human beings. Yet what do we find in practice? In spite of the fact that suckling is t* onty perfect method of. feeding any young animal, it has become the exception, and not the rule, for human mothers so to nourish their own off-

spring. No farmer contends for a moment that he employs artificial feeding in the case of calves because he thinks it as good as natural rearing.,He knows that the calf which runs at its mother's heels has more spirit and vitality and greater, resistiveness to disease than any hand-reared calf. However, there is more involved for both parent and offspring than mere identity in chemical composition of food.' Nutrition given by the mother in the natural way is always the best, and the wisest breeders will continue to let Nature have purebred stock at the highest pitch of health for the perpetuation and improvement of the best strains. When the farmer resorts to handrearing he does it simply because there is profit in removing butter-fat valued at 1/- a lb and replacing it with vege-

table starches which cost him about a penny. But this is not the attitude or feeling of the mother who rears her child by means of a bottle. Por he most part she is densely ignorant of the duties of maternity, and does not realise the injustice she is doing to herstilf vuil her offspring. She has no knowledge of or respect for the laws of Nature, and imagines that advertising charlatans have superseded Providence in the feeding of babies. Eve... cows' milk, which can be modified so as '_o serve reasonably well for the feeding of infants, becomes a secondry Lmporance in her eyes to cheap ' vegetable substances, sold at high prices. Then followed a comparative table contrasting the composition of human milk with that of a typical and* muchused patent baby food. Next a short summary and explanation was given, showing how easily cows' milk could be modified (humanised) so as to 1 resemble human milk. ';■".." '•"'•, (1 The address then proceded:

If mothers resent the trouble of using a thermometer, and ■ deliberately and knowingly choose that their offspring shall draw in with their milk active living organisms to fight agains J them and weaken or kill them, the matter is one for the maternal conscience; no law intervenes to prevent the maiming or killing of children. The use of patent foods is even more fatal than the ordinary misuse of cows' milk. The table gives a clue to this. *I trust that the summary statement I have given of some of the more essential relationships between the requirements of plants and animals may serve to direct attention to the unity and simpliciy of the. laws of organic nature and the need for rational education.

In appealing to "farmers we are appealing to that large section of our population to which we must look mainly for the development of our material resources, and the evolving of a strong, healthy, capable race. Civilisation is tending everywhere to undermine humanity, and we have no reason to be proud of the fact that, apart from dairy calves (which we treat rather worse than our own offspring), there is ,no_ young creature ir the world so ignorantly and cruelly nurtured as the average infant. There is no death-rate in Nature arising froir maternal neglect -and improper feeding that can be compared with human infant mortality. In this colony alone a generally diffused knowledge and recognition of infant requiremets and maternal dutiewpuld save the community at least onr life per diemy and would correspondingly increase' the strength and vitality of the "rest of the rising generation Statistics reveal the appalling fact that with artificial rearing infant mortality may be as high as from five, to thirty times the death-rae of children nourished by their mothers. Yet careless bottle-feeding is still resorted to by the majority of women.

In the face of such facts out 1 cd.ulr' wish seriously that, as Zangwill suggests, infants should be allowed tiir privilege of selecting their parents; then, as he says, "When children Begin to be fastidious about the families they are born into, parents wiH have

to improve or die childless. ... In their anxiety to be worthy of selection by poser-ity, parens will rise to heights of health and holiness of which our sick generation does not dream. If they do not, woe to them! They will be remorselessly left to die without issue. " v : ■:■ ; While Royal recognition is gratifying to the Society and to the Dominion, it cannot be less so to Lord and Lady Plunket, who have never for a moment lost faith or interest in the work they put their hands to, and for which they worked so hard. "We are proud to quote two sentences used by their Excelencfes, which are always beside us as a reminder of their high conception of the Society's mission. On the silver medallion which Lady Plunket supplies for every Plunket Nurse is graven: "Love, pity, and sympathy for God's sake and His little ones." While the manifesto published and distributed by their Excellencies throughout the Dominion in 1908 bore the following heading:— "For the sake of women and children, for the advancement of the Dominion, and for the honour of the Empire. rr