258 MEDICAL SECTION 



which have no relevancy whatever to this momentous 

 epoch. 



We can best attain to clear thinking, and sensible 

 conduct and habits, on the part of parents, by concen- 

 trating attention on the more urgent necessities of 

 the moment, and of the time immediately ahead. 

 This we effect partly through the agency of specially 

 trained nurses and members of the Society, and 

 partly by means of printed matter, lectures, &c. 



Having once gained the interest of the mother, 

 and won her confidence by manifest benefits accruing 

 to herself and her child through obedience to the 

 simple laws and needs of life having attained so 

 much, experience has shown us that parents (parti- 

 cularly men) will read and follow with absorbing 

 interest whatever one chooses to set before them. 

 Indeed,' interest in national bodily fitness and public 

 health can be attained only through natural unselfish 

 love of children and devotion to their welfare. We 

 find that the average man or woman, appealed to, 

 reasoned with, and trained in the right way, will do 

 anything for the health and well-being of offspring, 

 though they may be almost absolutely indifferent as 

 to their own physical fitness, until they have been 

 brought to see personal health in the light of a duty 

 and trust to see it as something which always, 

 directly or indirectly, benefits others, and to see ill- 

 health and disease, not only as a curse and blight to 

 the family, but as something unworthy and utterly 

 unpatriotic in its tendencies. As Stevens of Lady- 

 smith said, the very children "ought to be taught 

 that sickness is a badge of inferiority ; that to be 

 healthy is the prime condition of all things desirable 

 in life. Such an education might be trusted to breed 

 healthy bodies controlled by healthy minds." In 

 other words, rear and train our children properly and 

 our grown men and women may be trusted to look 

 after themselves. 



