THE CAREFUL MOTHER.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 9537, 8 July 1909, Page 5

THE CAREFUL MOTHER.

(To the Editor). Sir.—Materfamilias is not convinced that alcohol is bad for infants. I am sorry; yet I did not flatter myself that I had the skill to convince where there is the tradi-. tion of years, perhap3 generations, to combat. If I can stimulate enquiry, on the parb of the mothers of the community, as to the danger in using alcoholics for all ages, then, I think, that much is gained Here is some more medical authority on the question Sir Victor Horsley, in his latest work, 1908, on the subject says:—"Effective growth is entirely dependent upon vigorous protoplasmic activity, and anything which tends to lessen this protoplasmic activity brings, of coarse, the sum total of the development accomplished below the level of what was otherwise possible." This is from his chapter "On the Effect of Alcohol in the Tissues of Children." In a chapter on cell life and protoplasmic poisons he says: "Alcohol hampers and checks the vital activities of living cells." Dr. Guthrie Rankin, Cont., Rev., February, 1906, says:—"The stem forbidding of the use of both alcohol and tobacco under the age of puberty would ahield the nervous centres from two of their most deadly enemies." Sir] William Broadhent, M.D. P.R.S., entirely supports this contention. , Professor Kassowitz, of Berlin, states that when treating children who are delirious and seri- 1 ously ill with pneumonia, influenza, and other diseases, he frequently finds that the delirium ceases when the alcohol which they may have been given medicinally is stopped; and he pleads strongly for the disuse of alcohol in the illnesses of childhood because of its narcotic and irritant effects. Sir Thos. Barlow, M.D., K.C.V.0., when before the Inter-Departmental Committee on Physical Deterioration, 1903, said: "The occasional administrations of gin to children for flatuljnce is very common amongst certain classes of the London poor. The production of fibroid' c' anges, or, in other words, the hardening and toughening of certain of the viscera of a child during the period of development, may be very far-reaching in its ultimate effects." . He plainly disapproves of alcohol for babies. The above, though it may not convince, should certainly be enough to cause all who have hitherto relied on the bottle of spirits as the handy remedy for young or old to nt once review their position, and seek out some more rational treatment. We ought never to be too old to learn. —I am, etc A READER. (This correspondence must cease.Ed. W.A.)