238 Missouri Agricultural Report. 



to find a single college or institution of any kind that gives courses of 

 study designed to train women for this task. Many courses are given 

 in our universities that will give the foundation principles on which 

 intelligent motherhood must rest, but none are given for preparation for 

 motherhood alone. The world has not yet reached the educational de- 

 velopment where it is ready for such courses. Look at the tremendous 

 publicity that was occasioned by the newspapers when our own home 

 economics department attempted to have a class of girls see a baby 

 bathed by a trained nurse. It ought to be as natural for a woman to 

 go to an institution of learning to fit herself for her life work of home- 

 making and motherhood as it is for a man to study for law or the 

 ministry. "When we have realized that to make intelligent mothers who 

 can bring into the world strong healthy babies and rear them to equally 

 robust and efficient adults, we must educate women as well as girls, then 

 and then only, shall be cut down our per cent, of infant mortality. 

 Women must have thorough courses in the scientific subjects necessary 

 for. a grasp of the principles involved in intelligent motherhood, and not 

 a few didactic lectures or a dictated formula for modified milk. You 

 would as well give an untrained seamstress one pattern and tell her to 

 make all the family clothing by that one pattern. The results would, 

 no doubt, be equally felicitous in both cases. 



I once saw a mother feeding a young baby uncooked banana. 

 When I questioned her as to why she did it she replied that it was soft 

 and the baby liked it. An irreverent youth who heard the conversation, 

 remarked that tomato catsup was soft, and the baby might learn to like it. 

 It had not occurred to that woman that softness and what the baby likes 

 are possibly not good standards for the selection of infant food. She 

 was an intelligent w'oman, and had she been taught anything about 

 digestive enzymes and the development of digestive glands, how different 

 her selection of food would have been. 



I knew a college professor with several learned letters attached to 

 his name, who was told once when the baby was sick and he was left 

 in charge, that the baby needed a laxative. When asked later if he 

 had given the laxative he said, ' ' Yes, I gave him ten drops of paregoric. ' ' 

 Had that man had the necessary training for parenthood, he would have 

 known that opium is the chief constituent of paregoric, and has exactly 

 the opposite effect of laxative. Men need training for parenthood just 

 as well as women. 



How many women in making the dear little wardrobes for the 

 coming prince, plan tliat wardrobe from physiological and hygienic 



