THE CAREFUL MOTHER.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 9532, 2 July 1909, Page 5

THE CAREFUL MOTHER.

(To tbe Editoi). Sir,—Of COUl'fie you know, though Sometimes you may forget, that great Responsibility rests on the Press as to What it teaches; so many regard the newspaper says as proof positive. Now, what you said under the above heading in this morning's account of the the bars was no doubt meant by you as a joke—at least I took it so—yet I fear many will take it as a physician's prescription for "baby." I therefore ask you to correct it What doctor in the year of grace 1909 would prescribe brandy for an infant—to say nothing of£the dose you suggested? Mothers (and others) want to remehiber, in No-license areas >t least, that alco- / hoi is no more needed in ordinary ) diseases than it is as a beverage'. Tbe advocates of the use of alcoholics ; always appeal to the late Prof. Attwater to defend their position, but even he said at the close of his work 1 in speaking of alcohol", "The nett result is damage not advantage." If we would come nearer home, and our own day we might heed what Dr. P. Truby King said a few months since in a lecture to a nursing society, "Alcohol is a depressant—minute quantities dwarf and stunt the growth of brain cells" and we don't want to dwarf the growth of baby's brain. I will just trouble you with one more instance to show that even in medical practice the use of alcohol is dying out rapidly. The) London Temperance Hospital was founded in 1873, and since that date has treated 28,538 in-patients with a death rate of 7.5 per cent—somewhat lower than the maiority of hospitals —of these 28,538 only 81 were treated with alcohol, and a half of these died. This hospital does not absolutely forbid the use of alcohol, but requires that when it is used it shall be only on a distinct order from the medical man in charge of the case, and that the case, with particulars, shall be entered in the records of exceptional cases. Trusting I am not too length/.—! am, etc., July Ist, 1909. 1