Farmers' Week in Agricultural College. 237 



It should not be a cause for useless suffering to her, but just what it is, 

 a measure of the body temperature. 



The usual recourse is to some friend who has had similar experience, 

 or to a physician. A study of the curricula of medical schools in this 

 country will show how meager is the attention given to this question of 

 infant care and feeding. In so great a medical school as Johns Hopkins, 

 there is no required course in infant feeding, and it is possible in this 

 school for a man to graduate and have no particular training in pedi- 

 atrics, or infants' diseases. That is another story and since we are at 

 present entirely dependent upon our physicians for any and all help 

 that we may receive, it may be well for us not to criticize the physician, 

 though we recognize his lack of training. 



But to go back to our topic of conservatism in women, Dr. H. L, 

 Burrell, president of the American Medical Association, says: 



"It is difficult to change the habits of parents, but the children can 

 be educated into acquiring habits that will maintain a better standard 

 of health and living." 



Dr. Gulick, president of the National Playground Association, and 

 a man who has thought and studied much on questions of hygiene, once 

 said to me that he considered it useless to try to train women into doing 

 tilings in a new way — that the average woman cares for her baby and 

 dresses it just as her mother did. He thinks we may be able to educate 

 girls into new ways of doing things, but not women. How many girls 

 trained in home economics in our universities will in time "keep house 

 just as mother did." 



Personally I do not agree with these gentlemen, for while I recognize 

 that there is some truth in what they say, I am very optimistic as to 

 what women will do if they are given a chance. The world is so dread- 

 fully inconsistent in its treatment and its demands on women. If we 

 wish a man to be an expert in soils, we send him to a college to study 

 soils, and put him in communication with the National Bureau of Soils 

 at Washington. Or, if it is horticulture, or dairying, or engineering, we 

 do the same thing. If we have a sheep, horse or a cow of specially fine 

 pedigree, we put it in the care of a man trained for that one particular 

 thing. But how is it with our babies? We put them into the hands 

 of the young woman who happens to be their mother, regardless of what 

 her experience or training may be. What opportunity has the average 

 young woman had to make herself equal to the great task of taking care 

 of this most difficult of all young animals to rear? He is the most dif- 

 ficult to bring to his fullest physical and mental development, because he 

 is the top-most bough of the evolutionary tree. I have not been able 



