OUR BABIES.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2610, 18 September 1909, Page 4 (Supplement)

OUR BABIES.

(By Hygeia.)

Published under tho auspices of the Society . for the Promotion of the Health of Women and Children.

ADDRESSES OF PLUNKET NURSES AND SECRETARIES.

Wellington.—Plunket Nurse M'Donald, 73 Aro street. Tel. 2425. Hon. sec., Mrs. M‘Vicar, 45 Majoribanks street, City. Tel. 2624. Auckland. —Plunket Nurse Chappel, Park street. Tel. 851. Office of Society, 2 Chancery street. Tel. 829. Office hours Tuesdays and Fridays, 2.20 to 4 p.m. Hon. sec., Mrs. W. H. Parkes, Marinoto, Symonds street, Tel. 240. Napier.—Plunket Nurse Donald, Masonic Hotel. Tel. 87. Hon. sec., Mrs. E. A. W. Henley, P.O. Box 64. Tel. 147. Society’s Baby Hospital, ICaritane Home, Andersen’s Bay, Dunedin. Tel. 1985. Demonstrations on points of interest to mothers are gven by the matron every Wednesday afternoon from 2.30 to 3.30. All mothers invited. Messages may be left at any time at the Plunket Nurses’ Offices or private addresses. The Society’s official sheet of instructions, written by Dr. Truby King, price 3d (postage free), and all other information available from the hon. secretary of each branch. TO SAVE THE TEETH. Apart altogether from the practice of dentistry, Dr. Pickerill, the head of tho Dental School at Otago University, is performing an inestimable service to tlie community in trying to inforce on ns the fundamental truth that the rising generation cannot have good teeth unless the “pap feeding” which rules the nursery and holds sway to a large extent throughout life is given up. Dr. Henry Campbell has been telling us for the last 20 years that we live in a “pap age.” The ma in object of the degenerate modern is to have his food liquid, soft and mushy, “made up” or so tender as to need almost no chewing. The following is a short report of a lecture, “Teeth, Ancient and Modern,” given by Dr. Pickerill last week. —Dr. Pickerill’s Lecture.— “Applying the historical method, Dr. Pickerill traced what may be called the evolution of the modern tooth, going back as far as several hundred years, B.C. The moral to be learnt appeared to be: Give your teeth the work to do which Nature intended them to perform, and you" wiil have good teeth. This truth was enforced by reference to actually ascertained data. Taking the Eskimos, for instance, an examination of 70 skulls had discovered only one diseased tooth. North American Indians show a slightly greater proportion, 10 per cent.; they might have been longer in contact with civilisation. South Sea Islanders, who, on account of their cannibal predilections had been left much to themselves, their native habits of life thus being uninterfered with, also had a very small proportion of diseased teeth. Taking the Maoris, for instance, until quite recent times they had shown practically no trace of dental disease at all. Dr. Scott, who was an authority, had informed him that he had only seen one carious tooth in all the skulls lie had examined, and the speaker’s own examinations bore him out in this. The Hebrews were a people of whom mention might be -made, as it was a singular fact that in all the laws drawn up by Moses, excellent as they were from a public health jHiint of view, no mention was made of the hygiene of tho tooth, and from that the conclusion had been drawn that tho ancient Hebrews had excellent teeth, and therefore there was no need to mention the subject. However, it was known that they valued their teeth very much, as they placed them on the same footing as their eyes—an eye lor an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. It was said that the ancient Egyptians suffered from dental decay more than they did. It was a custom when people died to overlay their teeth with gold and early investigators mistook these overlaid teeth for fillings. The lecturer then proceeded to deal with the teeth of more modern peoples and with early methods, of dental science, and demonstrated that the more civilised a people' became the more, thenteeth degenerated —they degenerated for want of exercise, because the food of civilised peoples was soft and sweet; the use of sugar had become an abuse; the result being fermentation, indigestion. and the dissolving of the enamel and the lime salt of which the teeth are composed.” MASTICATION. (By Dr. Henry Campbell.—Continued from Last Week’s Column.) —Evolution of Jaws and Teeth.— Inasmuch as before man learnt to break up the cellulose framework of his vegetab.e food by cooking, grinding, and other means, lie was compelled ’to make vigorous use of his masticatory apparatus, we may be sure that in the pre-cookery period this was correspondingly strong and massive, but when the discovery of artificial means of disintegrating the cellulose (grinding and cooking) mastication was in great measure relieved of one of its chief functions, the jaws and teeth began, to get smaller, while dental caries, hitherto almost unknown, became less rare, invading chiefly the third molar (‘‘‘wisdom teeth”). Again, as the effect of agriculture was to reduce the cellulose ingredients of vegetable food and thus render it more easy of mastication, we find the jaws and teeth further diminishing in size during this next period, and diseases of the teeth increasing in frequency. These effects. were not, however, pronounced- during tho early agricultural epoch, partly because man still continued to eat freely of the raw vegetable food, and partly because much of his cooked vegetable food needed, oiling to its coarseness, considerable mastication. It is not until we .arrive at comparatively recent times that the effect upon the jaws and teeth of food artifically produced and prepared becomes pronounced. The present-day vegetable food —in our own country, at least.—owing to the combined effects of improved agriculture and skilful milling gild cooking, is so soft that it excites comparatively little mastication. We live, in fact, in an age of pap. Hence the modern jaw Is undergoing considerable diminution in size, with the result that the teeth, which are not diminuishing in number at the same rate, are often unable to take up their normal positions, while dental

diseases have assumed truly alarming proportions. —The Instinct to Masticate.— During the first months Of life the natural function of feeding at. the breast provides the infant’s jaws, tongue, and lips with all the needful exercise. Bottle-feeding fails to do this, and in consequence we frequently find bottle-fed children seeking to satisfy their natural instinct to use those structures by sucking their fingers or other convenient objects. Memo, by Hygeia.—The best bot-

tle feeding is inferior to suckling in regard to the work done during feeding but if proper care is- taken the mother can ensure that her baby shall “work for liis living,” and not merely imbibe his food in a passive way. The smaller the hole in the indiarubber nipple the better, provided the baby can be brought to work bard enough to secure sufficient milk in from a quarter of an hour to twenty minutes. This can be effected by tho mother holding the bottle and keeping a slight tension on it, and moving the teat -about so that the baby’s mouth is properly stimulated and lias something to tug at. Thus, starting with the mouth, the whole system of/the babv is set hard at ■work—nerves, muscles, circulatory, breathing, and digestive organs busily doing their appointed tasks. The long tube feeder is one of the worst enemies of the modern baby. There is nothing to pull on. and the baby simply imbibes’ its food without appreciable stimulus or exercise. —Givo the Baby a Bone. —

The teeth are a provision for biting hard foods, but even before they actually appear the child tries to exercise his toothless gums on any hard substance upon which lie can lay hold, and there can be no doubt that his doing so tends to facilitate the eruption of the teeth, a truth which is, indeed, universally recognised, whether by the primitive mother who hangs the tooth of some wild animal round the neck ol her infant, or the un-to-date one who provides hers with a bejewelled ivory or coral bauble. As soon as the teeth have been cut the masticatory instinct has among primitive peoples abundant scope in the chewing of the coarse, hard foods, which constitute tlieir dietary ; but in us moderns, subsisting as we do, mainly on soft foods, it does not find its proper expression, and tints tends to die out. Nevertheless it dies a hard death, and long continues to assert itself ; witness the tendency of children to bite their pencils and penholders and to chew small pieces of india-rubber for hours together. I have known a child to gnaw through a bone penholder much in the same way as a carnivorous animal gnaws at a bone.

I may allude in passing to the grinding of the teeth which takes place during sleep in disturbed states of the nervous system. It is a true masticatory act, in which the normal lateral grinding movement of the lower iaw is well marked, and it may thus be regarded as a perverted manifestation of the masticatory instinct.