OUR BABIES.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 3112, 7 January 1911, Page 4

OUR BABIES.

Published under the auspices, of the Society for the Health of Women and Children. “It is wiser to put up a fence at the top of a precipice than to maintain an ambulance at the bottom.” (By “Hygeia.”) WHY BABIES DIE. At this season of the year there is one thing which anyone interested in the welfare of babies should insist on over and over again, and that is the need Tor eternal care and watchfulness on the part of the mother or nurse to prevent the baby being given a single meal of risky or tainted milk. Some women save themselves the trouble of thinking, -or taking care, by indiscriminately boiling the milk every morning and evening ; but they fail to realise tint by so doing they injure the imtiitive qualities of the baby’s food and render the child more liable to catch disease, besides endowing ft with Jess stamina to hold out after disease has gained a foothold than would he the case with a child fed for the most part on unboiled milk.

Milk which has been boiled, condensed, or dried tends to cause constipation, and it must be born in mind that constipation is first cousin to diarrhoea. A constipated child is liable at any moment to go to the opposite extreme and to readily acquire intractable diarrhoea.

The resorting to super-heated milk should be limited to the times, occasions, and local circumstances which more or less necessitate its use. Thus, in certain localities, during very sultry, trying weather, the use of superheated milk (whether boiled, condensed or dried), properly modified and prepared 'to suit the baby, may be a wise precaution. But why should the mother subject the baby’s mil'll to' the prejudical effects of super-heating every day in the week, when perhaps, even in a bad locality, there are not a dozen days in the hottest- month of the year which render this precaution desirable.

The true housewife and mother watches the weather, and notes any sharp rise or fall in the temperature, even though her baby is breast-fed and there is no milk to prepare. She is attentive to changes in the weather because she has to see that the child is neither underclad or over-clad day or night; and she has to note the direction of the wind so as to guard against undue draughts.. But if the baby is receiving cow’s milk the incentive to paying reasonable attention to the weather is infinitely greater than in the case of a nursling at the breast. However many deaths and however much injury to children, resulting in lifelong unfitness, may be traced to bad dairies and the carelessness 01 dairymen and milkboys, mothers should realise that at least as much harm is often done the baby’s food in the house, through ignorance and lack of proper care and attention to the safeguarding of milk after it has been delivered. The best and purest of milk may be rendered quite unfit for use An a few hours, especially in warm weather, through the householder failing to take simple, necessary precautions. FILTH AT THE SOURCE. However, I am far from wanting to understate the dire results -to childrenarising from carelessness on the farm or on the road to market. Indeed, it is impossible for parents to be too particular as to the source from which they -derive their milk, -whether for the baby or for the rest -of the family. If anything she can sheet -home the unspeakj able possibilities of filth in this connection and make people inspect for themselves (wherever possible) the surroundings of the dairy from which they derive their milk supply, the following extract from Henry Lawson’s “Day on a Selection” may be relied on as incentive. A BAD, COLONIAL DAIRY.

“The rising Australian generation is represented by a thin, lanky 'youth of about 15. He is milking. The eowyard is next the house, and is almost ankledeep in slush. The boy drives a dusty, discouraged-looking cow into the bail, and pins her there; then he gets tackle on to her right hind leg, hauls it back, and ma'kes it fast to the fence. There are 11 cows, but not one of them can be milked out of the bail—chiefly because their teats are sore, ahe selector does not know what makes tue teats sore, but he has an unquestioning faith in a certain ointment, recommended to him by a man who knows less about cows than he does himself, which lie causes to be applied at irregular intervals, leaving the mode of application to the discretion of his son. Meanwhile the -teats remain gore.

“Having made the cow Fast. the youngster cautiously takes hold of the least sore teat, yanks it suddenly, and •dodges the cow’s hock. When lie gets enough milk to dip his dirty hands in, he moistens the teats, and things go on more smoothly. Now and then lie relieves tlie monotony of his occupation by squirting at the eye of a calf which is dozing in an adjacent pen. Other times lie milks into his mouth. Every time the cow kicks, a burr or a bit of grass seed or a bit of something else falls into the milk, and the boy drowns these things with a well-directed stream on the principle of want’s out of sight is out of mind. “Sometimes the boy sticks his head into the cow’s side, hangs on by a teat, and dozes, while tit© bucket, mechani-

cally gripped between his knees, sinks lower and lower till it rests on the ground. Likely as not he’ll doze on until his -mother’s shrill voice startles him -with an inquiry as to whether he intends to get that milking done to-day ; other times he is roused by the plunging of the cow, or, # knocked over by a calf which has broken through a defectivo panel in the pen. In .the latter case the youth gets a tackle on to the calf, detaches its head from the teat with the heel qf his hoot, and makes it fast somewhere. Sometimes the cow breaks or loosens the legrope, and gets her leg into the bucket, and then the youth clings desperately to the pail, and hopes she’ll get her hoof out again without spilling tile milk. Sometimes she does, more often she doesn’t—it depends on the strength of the boy and the pail and on the strategy of the former. Anyway, the boy will lamb the cow down with a jagged yard shovel, let- her out, and bail up another.”