OUR BABIES.

Taihape Daily Times, 1 July 1918, Page 6

OUR BABIES.

the dangers of winter time. In midwinter we are free from extreme anxiety with, regard to Infantile Diarrhoea, but this is the season when y?e 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 me to (he the most serious side of the matter; the damaging and weakening of the whole building organism, through want of a little forethought and common sense on the part of the parents, and their failure to get a grip of what is necessary in the way of prevention. HIGH WINTER DEATH RATE. There is another side to the question of letting infants catch cold — namely, the large part it plays in piling up the death-rate. Turn to our annual statistics, or 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 minfrihat a very large number of those who do not actually succumb in infancy, through catching cold, fall a prey later on to tuberculosis. .

All this miserable train of evils ■would be avoided if parents could only to brought to realise that prevention is easily achieved, and can be achieved in one way only—namely, Iby giving every child its natural rights of abundance of pure, cool, fresh air, plenty of exercise and outing in the open air, avoidable coddling in warm, stuffy xooms at any time, avoidance of excess of 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 he) out into the open air with hare arms, bare legs, and totally insufficient wrappings, and then the mother, finding that her child 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 open doorway; or, worst still, propped np on a pillow in front of a fire just after a warm hath, “toasting its toes,” as shown in the picture and described on page 67, “Feeding and Care of Baby.” . TOASTING- BABY’S TOES. This last crazy custom is less prevalent than it was when it first cams prominently under our notice nearly 14 years ago, and I think the Society's picture has had something to do with ■bringing home a conviction of tile folly of the proceeding. “Toasting the baby’s toes” used to he one of our ■besetting troubles. Almost every new nurse brought the same fatuous idea with her, and, spite of all warnings, we used to find the babies lying in the draughtiest place in the room, with damp heads, flushed faces, and cold, blue little bare legs, supposed to be warming up after the bath. And the nurses would defend their action by saying- that it was the custom, or that the leading doctors nowadays preached fresh air, and said you could not have too much of it. A PEBSNAL REMINISCENCE.

How well I remember a capable, clearheaded mother, full of common sense herself, saying to me in despair, regarding her baby: “Johnny is always catching cold, and the nurse nearly drives me with the highest recommendations; sho is really capable and well-trained in most matters, regular as to food and habits, dean, tidy, most attentive and very fond of the baby; but on the matter of fresh air she is simply mad. I try to reason with her which I find baby placed in a direct draught, near the open door or toasting his toes in front of the fire, and never a screen at any time; but she actually casts YOU up at me, saying that you and Dr, say .that people can’t have too much fresh -air!” CSuch things always call up in any mind the clever saying of an eminent authority on "the Fresh-air Treatment of Consumpiton, when dealing with the stupid lack of common sense often shown by over-zealous partisans; «Some people have a positive passion for unneccessary discomfort. ’ ’ As I have said, it very difficult sometimes to write calmly about the unnecessary pains and penalties imposed on babies by their parents and guardians and and I am certainly not in a calm, mood just- now. I am told that a mother’s first-born (w T ho had been brought to do well, and was quite on the right track after a more, than ordinarily chequered career due to errors in feeding) is now laid up with Bonchitis. Of course, the parents will put the attack down to a “visitation of Providence.” just as Herbert Spencer tells ns parents did last century whenever their children got ill.