The Coconino sun., 1916-03-17
THE CONSERVATION OF BABIES
Address by Dr. C. w. Suit before the Flagstaff Woman's Club during
 Better Baby Week.")

seryation of our babies, and Will en- deayor to do so as briefly as possible dwelling particularly upon the diiii- entities that will be encountered and the remedies to be applied.
 The press throughout the country has been filled with articles dealing with the care of our infants and seVe- ral interesting and instructive papers have been read in our town, deaiing especially with the care, bathing ana feeding of infants; but none, so Tar as I know, have told us how to put their teachings into effect.
 It is very easy, indeed, for me to stand up here and tell you to feed your babies every two, three or four hours, as the case may be, to have certain time to bathe them, also to keen the room at a certain tempera- ture, but when it is taken into consi- iteration that the mother may have other children that require her atten- tion, and yet others in school, and maybe also a hungry husband to cook for, you at once see the fallacy Of laying down certain fixed rules for her to go by. She may wish to carry them out. but she cannot. If she is able to employ assistance so that she can carry out the instructions, she is not a member of that class where the in- fant mortality is large. It is an ex- cellent thing to be able to keep our houses at an even temperature for our babies, but that requires that 1t be heated by the modern appliances, which can be done only by the fav- ored few.
 Let us take the average family in our own little town and see how many are able to afford those conveniences, They are sparingly few, and yet, that is not the class where our infant nor tality ranks highest. Now let us go below the average family where the infant mortality is the greatest. We 20 into house of two or three rooms, and very often am very sorry to say only one room. The father is out at work, earning let us say, two dollars a day. There is an infant at the breast, several children, ranging from one to five years old, half naked, and dirty, running about the house. Now tell me what in the name of common sense is the use of telling that mother to bathe her children at a certain time every day, dress it !n flannel and keep the room a certain temperature. Poor things they are lucky to keep body and soul together. Yet what I have recited is not my own experience alone, but I have not the slightest doubt but what the same story could be related by every physician in this town, and no doubt some of you here today have seen the same thing. Yet my friends such families are a menace to myself and family as well as yours. What breeding ground it is for tuberculosis and also all the other in- fections in the category of disease, not mentioning the criminal that are brought up in such surroundings, but as long as such conditions are allowed to exist the result will be as we have it today, large infant mortality, and our jails and insane asylums over crowded.
 Life is a struggle for existence midst a hostile environment or in other words, nature is hostile to all animal life and if we do not very rigidly conform to his laws life is soon taken away from us. Take the incident that l have related above. In all probabilities the father and mother have been reared under the same cir cumstances and they are subnormal both mentally and physically. They bring children into this world, they are weddings and fall an easy victim to disease, and die before the first year of life, and the community in which they reside should be thankful that nature steps in with his laws and removes them from the scene, for every one of them are a serious men, ace to the better classes.
 Now let us trace the life history of one that does survive and reaches manhood. He passes through his babyhood days half clothed and half starved, has the various diseases of childhood, reaches school age, the truant officer comes around and says to the parents: You must send that child to school He starts to school; but attneds very irregular, sickness is the usual excuse. The teacher finds him dull. He stays in school making but little progress, until the law says he has to attend no longer. He is thrown llnon the community to sbif+