The plea of ignorance as excuse for parental neglect of the right methods of caring for children no longer holds good, for the Society for the Health of Women and Children is continually propagating the necessary information and instruction, which, if intelligently followed, must result in a decreased infant mortality and a corresponding increase in the number of healthy and vigorous boys and girls.
The Society has taken a wise step in passing a resolution directing attention to the too-prevalent practice on the part of parents and causing infants to sleep alongside them. Unhappily the fatality which are occasionally attributed to this practice represents only a tithe of its unfortunate results.
The fact cannot be too strongly stressed that the vitality of the infant is lowered and its general health prejudiced when it is compelled to sleep in close proximity to a parent or parents.
Pure air is the first essential to good health, and when the child is placed in such a a position as to be forced to inhale the expired air from its parents as well as from itself, the effect is highly mischievous.
The ideal arrangement is one under which to child is put to sleep in a separate apartment, within easy call; but where this plan is not practicable the child should be placed in a cot at the end of the room opposite to the bed of the mother, out of direct draught and yet surrounded by a stream of fresh-flowing air.
Expert investigation goes to show that the general adoption of such a plan would do much to mitigate the lung troubles which afflict so many people in after-life, and contribute so largely to the prevalence of the dreadful scourge of consumption.
The reason for the precaution is easily demonstrable, and, if given a little thought, should commend itself even to parents prejudiced against what they deem the fads of the innovator, and naturally inclined to adhere to the ways of their revered ancestors.
The used up air given off from the lungs is dangerously poisonous, and it does not, as is too commonly supposed, necessarily ascend.
One of the leading authorities of the day on the subject of ventilation has suggested, indeed, that unless the temperature of the surrounding air is below 81 degrees, the foul air does not ascend, but stagnates, and it is this stagnant air that envelopes the infant who is forced to sleep alongside its parents.
The deleterious effect of a tender infant breathing for several hours at a stretch the poisonous breath of its parents may readily be imagined.
It is to be hoped that the attention which the Society for the Health of Women and Children has directed to this matter may have the effect of leading parents to recognise the responsibility that rests upon them to secure that their infants shall be enabled to breathe fresh, pure air during their sleep.
- ODT, 14.8.1911.
