AN INTERESTING LECTURE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 50, 24 March 1909, Page 3

AN INTERESTING LECTURE.

THE HEALTH OF WOMEN AXI) CHILDREN. Dr. Truby King gave au address las evening' at the Council Chambers to th< members of the committee of the for the Promotion uf the Health oi Women and Children, lie dwelt speei ally on the advance which had been madi during the last half century, and especially during the last ten or fifteen year> in the professions of medicine mid nurs-

ing. Referring to the inlluence of the grandmother in the nursery, he said he hoped he would not be misunderstood when he said that the grandmother sometimes proved to be the baby's worst efiemv. Making the same remark once tafure, he had been reported with a heading in capitals, Dr. King denounces the grandmother." The reporter did not add the mitigating remarks that followed, the recognition that unselfish devotion lay at the bottom of the mischief. The grandmother tended to perpetuate in the present day usages and ideas which held sway during the time when she was bringing up her own family. Deeply-rooted errors existed in all directions regarding the rearing of Rabies, and the Plunket nurse should exercise a great inlluence in the direction of replacing these by the simple principles made clear through the advance ot modem knowledge. Women, he said, were apt to shy at the name oi Science, but science only meant knowing instead of guessing, and, as Huxley said, science was only '' organised common sense." Scientific methods were

simple anil precise methods pursued for clear reasons instead of haphazard guessing aud blundering along. Referring to the ease ol a grandmother who ) in his own experience, lad recently given a new-born baby brandy, because her old family physician told her he always advised this "so as to prevent the baby having a taste for strong drink when it grew up," Dr. King pointed out how alcohol exercised a universally depressing action on growth oi all young cells, plant as well as animal. He pointed specially to the dwarfing and stunting influence of even minute quantities otl alcohol on the growth of the highest cells of the brain, and showed how it came to pass that the progeny of alcoholic mothers tended to be degenerates and epileptics. The baby of the mother who took alcohol tended, he said, to have the same kind of defect through lack of proper growth of the higher brain cells that chronic alcoholics brought on themselves through drinking in after life. In the one case there was defect of growth; in the other shrinkage of what had grown. He condemned the use of beer or stout by mothers as trading to prevent and vitiate the secretion of milk, and showed by means of lantern slides the enormous decrease in beer, etc., ordered in hospitals now, compared with what was ordered a dozen years ago. A most striking diagram from Sir Victor Horseley and Sturges' recent book was shown, illustrating how ■the taking of a glass of beer per diem by compositors diminished the amount of type set, while it increased the number of errors made. This, he said, ran through the whole series of human activities, though the individual always isupposed that he was doing more work on the days when he took what he supposed was a merely stimulating quantity of drink. Alcohol was to be regarded as a universal depressant, and as such must be strictly avoided by the expectant and nursing mother, who aeedjall her activities and powers to be at their best, and, above all, needed to ■have pure, unpoisoned blood. She must jiever forget that the poison might come from within as well as from without. It might come from constipation or it might come from lack of fresh air and exercise, which gave rise to imperfect •burning of waste products, and thus led to poisoning of the system. When the mother had a headache it was because her brain cells were poisoned, and the effect of simultaneous poisoning of the baby's growing nervous system by the •same poisoned blood was an arrest of growth. The supreme importance of breastfeeding and the extreme rarity of the «eed for artificial feeding, when women looked properly after themselves, was insisted on. The principles underlying /rational artificial feeding were explained, and an emphatic protest was made •against mothers continuing to feed 1 babies under any circumstances with anere cow's inilk and water, or with condensed milk and patent food, now ■that they knew better and had the Plunket nurse in their midst ready to ' give them a hand in the> home by demonstrating how simply'all that was re- 1 quired could be carried out liv anyone. '

A number of lantern slides were exhibited. At the conclusion Dr. King expressed his great indebtedness to Mr. jforey for kindly providing and manipulating an excellent optical lantern. A vote of thanks to Dr. King, proposed by Sirs. Dockrill, who presided, terminated the meeting.