OUR BABIES.

Gisborne Times, Volume XLV, Issue 3994, 29 July 1915, Page 3

OUR BABIES.

ENCES-S OF WATER IN THE AIR. SHOULD FOG’~OR~MIST BE EXCLUDED FROM OUR. SLEEPING ROOMS? A mother writing about her baby says:—AVo give her as much fresh air as possible, but we have such dreaufu! logs here at night that it would he too severe to allow too much to ©inter the bodircGin, so we thought it wiser to shut it out. The notion:That fog or mist is bun nitui if admitted to tho bedroom is slid comparatively common. This erroneous idea dates hack to the time when ague was prevalent even in England, to say nothingftff tho evil cff.c’.s of ‘‘night miasma,” which have been associated right down to our times w.tii Roman marshes and other swampy regions. Tho fear of night air was founded on thei fact that exclusion of the. fogs andl mists of evening tended to let-son greatly the risks of ague and other malarial manifestations. In rca.ity the mist itself had nothing to elo with the poisoning of the system; but it is only quite recently that science has shown the real source of danger—namely, the: mosquitos. These ins ots are liable to swarm in at the open windows in damp localities, and, of course, they are more or Jess excluded when the windows aro closed IkuYt. sundown. THE MOSQUITO THE REAL ENEMY. AA T know now that so-called poisoning by night air disappears as soon as we banish the mosquito. Tho mists of Panama, Manila, and other formerly deaciiy places in llio tropics may now be freely admitted to bedrooms, provided the haunts of the mosquito have been rendered uninhabitable to these pests by covering their abiding places with a thin film of petroleum. There was no country in the world where night air was muro dreaded than tiie Southern States, the Gulf of .Mexico, and Panama; yet it is from the Americans themselves that we have the clever saying:—-V‘The only dangerous night air is the air you keep bottled up in your bedroom." Saturation with water vapour a a perfectly natural state of tho atmosphere over most of the world, being thei prevailing condition near the coast and at sea, and anywhere else when it is raining. .Many people are foolish enough to stay at home themselves, and to keep their children indoors also, simply because it happens to bo a cold, damp, foggy, or rainy day. In reality, there is no more lame or lazy excuse than this, for failing to go out and take exercise. Who does not know th:* exhilarating feeling of coming back after an hour or so of vigorous tramping through rain and sleet? No one ever catches cold from such exposure, or from breathing such air ; hut people are. always •‘catching th.ir death of cold” or becoming consumptives through fear of fresh air and of the dampness inseparable from wet weather and coastal regions. At ono time it was thought that Sanatoria for consumptives would have to be restricted to high, dry, inland regions; but now this is known not to bo the case, hi any Phthisis sanatoria are situated ia comparatively damp places, and seme are even located in regions where mist is a prevailing feature. Yet the patients recover, so long as a few simple rules are observed—namely :

(1) Live day and night in pure outside air, including mist and fog if it happens to bo there. (2) Avoidance of fires and coddling indoors, but provision of suitable, sensible clothing, bedding, and good footwear. Roots should not only be comfortable and conductive to the taking of active exercise, but they should be made of sound leather and not of kid or paper. (3) The taking of a sufficiency of daily outdoor exericse, (4) Good simple diet, regularity of all habits, and avoidance, of excess in any direction.

People living in specially misty places have sometimes said to me:— “I am sure you can have no idea what it is like here sometimes at night. There is often cold, driving mist, that makes everything damp. Surely vou would not have us keep the windows wide open at such times.” My answer is unhesitatingly, “Yes!” In point of fact, in my own neighborhood I have 'know'll a dense mist to persist day and night for a week; but this has never been made ail excuse for keeping tho windows otherwise than wide open at night, and no such excuse would be listened to at the Karitane Baby Hospital in misty weather. To close the windows at such times would be to increase, not to lessen, the risks of catching cold. I can imagine the mother saying impatiently:—

ARE THERE NO VIRTUES TN CLEAR, DRY AIR? Certainly there are. Nothing is more bracing and exhilarating than a change from tho damp coast No 1 he clear, .dry, brisk air, blue skies, and bright sum bine of some high, .nland locality ; and no change is more likely to dispel chronic colds or coughs; but the same is often true of a change from inland to the seaside. In any case, most ol us have to habituate ourselves to living on the coast, and our children should bo brought up hardy and vigorous by being accustomed to open air day and night and never being coddled. Indeed, they should, all abhor closed windows arid stuffy bedrooms, as any normal child docs if he has been brought up to sleeping with open windows’ or, better still, sleeping on an open balcony. I know little children in Dunedin at the present time (widminter),who never sleep anywhere else but on an open balcony. They are hardy, rosy-faced little cherubs, and nothing would upset them moro than any proposal to put their cots indoors. In all paris of New Zealand I have found that where there is a choice between bedrooms and'balconies or verandahs, the children are always eager to s'loep outside. COMMON-SENSE PROVISIONS. Of course, if there is excessive driving mist—either on a balcony or a verandah or in a bedroom, there is no

need to be in the current. Tho use of screens, or the placing of beds out of tho line of draught, can be left to people’s common sense,—at least they could easily devise means of fending the bod if they would study the illustrations on pages 65 and Of) ot the Society’s book “Feeding and Care ol Baby,” and read the simple, practical directions in the text-.