The Fulton County news. [volume] (McConnellsburg, Pa.) 1899-current, 1917-01-11
NUMBER II
NEGLECT BABIES; CARE FOR CALVES.
Little Talks on Health ani Hygiene by
Samuel q. Dixon, N. D., IL. D.,
Commissioner of Health.

ceives more intelligent care than
the baby Of our own flesh and
blood.
Why should this be so in this
highly civilized country of ours,
where the people are naturally
atfectionate and kind? In the
first place, it is due to the psy-
Geological attitude of many of
the parents. They seem to take
it for granted that anything call
ed by the name of food" will,
if administered in regular three
times-a-day portions, sustain the
lives of children satisfactorily.
They don't stop to think that
you need something besides a
name to make real food. The
result of this is that we see every
day many little children, stunted
in stature and with soft, weak
muscles, all because of a want of
well-balanced diet. Many of
these little ones, for instance,
have been fed regularly on bread
and molasses, and thus missed
entirely fat and albumen. Such
children have little or no resist
ance to disease and often fall
victims to tuberculosis.
That is because their parents
did not know that mixed diet is
necessary to supply the different
parts of the anatomy, and to sup
ply the heart and other elements
that are needed to carry on prop
erly the work of the body. But
those same people know what
their domestic animals need to
eat, and see. that they get it.
Some parents go still further
and permit their children to Sc
lect their own food. There was
time in the remote age of the
ancestors of man, when this
might have been safe. In those
days humans participated to
degree in the animal instinct to
avoid harmful food. We have
completely lost it nowadays, and
if we let our children select their
own food, we place them at a
distinct disadvantage beside the
colt or calf already mentioned.
for the youngest animal shares
its elders instinct to differentiate
between the poisonous and non
poisonous products of nature.
Who is going to do anything
for the babies? The colt and the
calf do not need any help, we
have decided, but who will teach
the parents little of the things
they should know about their
children, and don't?
There is somebody to teach
these parents about the colts and
calves tuey own and even the
little pigs, if they don't happen
to know. Our national COVER
ment has undertaken the task,
and its Department of Agricul-
ture has a man at the head who
sits in the Presidents cabinet.
He has Congress appropriate
large sums of money to teach
farmers how to feed and care for
newborn colts, cows, pigs, sheep,
chickens and all the other stock.
But our national government
does not seem to have thought
about the babies. There is no
Department of Health at Wash
ington and at Cabinet meetings
the babies have no representative
though pigs do.
What we need is that more of
the composition and values of
foodstuffs should ae taught in
our schools and that Federal
Department of Health should be
established to look after human
kind as well as the animals are
looked after.
Then we would not see on our
farms puny, half.starved children
and beautifully developed Jersey,
Guernsey and Swiss cows, and
Percheron, Clydesdale and Hack
ney horses in the pink of condi-
ton, which has been obtained by
following instructions given by
the Department of Agriculture
of the United States.