The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1924-05-26
SickLy Children
By u. ADD1NaroN BRucE

Show me a child who is ailing much of
the time and 1 will show you one who in all
probability is exceptionally undernourished.
Too generally the parents of so-called deli
cate or sickly children fail to appreciate the
close relation that exists between under-nu-
triton and disease. Because of this failure
they wrongly attribute their children's fire.
quent ill-health to some constitutional weak
ness.
THE reason Johnny and Mary catch every
disease going" they regretfully tell them
selves, lis that it is their nature to do so.
They never can be strong and healthy like
Nother children, we must make up our minds
to that"
Perhaps this is true of some few sickly
children. 1t is not true Of the great ma
jority. Not nature but nurture is at fault
in their case.
Ask any medical man of long experience
and he will bear out this statement. He
will tell you his observation is that most Of
the children he is called upon to treat for
contagious and other ailments are children
less resistive to infection than their play
mates because they are not properly nour-
ished.
Which does not invariably mean that they
are children getting sufficient food. The
may be, and often are, children given the
wrong kinds of food.
Children, for example, who are permitted
to subsist on a diet which includes meats
and sweets in undue amount and milk and
green's in scanty measure, cannot be well
nourished. So with children whose diet is
almost entirely lacking in hard foods.
Such children, because they do not have
to chew their food thoroughly, are more than
likely to eat too fast. Then their digestion
suffers, with under-nutrition as a result.
Also the lack of hard food-stuffs means that
their teeth are not strengthened by exercise,
with a consequent liability to infection and
decay, to the further impairing of their nu-
triton.
Indeed, many a sickly child in order to
emerge from the ranks of the sickly needs
only to have his or her teeth put In good
! condition. Others stand chiefly in need oil
treatment for diseased tonsils and aden6id
growths, factors which account for much
preventable under-nutrition of children.
Then there are sicklys children who, though
| fed properly, are nevertheless reared in ways
| that prevent their food from nourishing them
as it otherwise would.
Children denied adequate physical exercises
or permitted to exercise to exhaustion, chill
dren given the dangerous luxury OF lat'
hours, children oveE-stimulated by being given
too much and too varied entertainment-al
these are children liable to digest food poorly
| and as a result to suffer from an uncommon
degree Of differentiation.
So are children whose home environment
in its psychic aspects, is depressing or emo
tionaTly disturbing in some other way.
Parents who nag, brighten, and in one
way or another frequently harass their chill
dren, should not be surprised if those chill
dren are sickly. The state of the mind, II
should never be forgotten, has profound
| influence on the state of the body.
| Consequently, whenever it is question O.
dealing with sickly child, instead of merely
bemoaning the child's tendency to ill-healtt
start an inquiry into the child's nutritiona
condition. Nearly always it will be foun'
| that some factor making for under-nutritioI
| is present, and that with the removalsof Thu
| factor the sickness will vanish too.