268 MEDICAL SECTION 



columns of matter for issue to the weekly or daily Press 

 throughout the country, or it might be done by a Govern- 

 ment Department, or even by the Chairman himself. 

 The Board of Agriculture issued pamphlets dealing with 

 vegetable parasites, but the ailments of babies were 

 of considerably more importance than the illnesses of 

 cabbages. Whether the Board of Education or the Local 

 Government Board would be the proper Department to 

 deal with such a matter he did not know. After Dr. 

 King's statement about the differences of opinion amongst 

 the experts, he was almost inclined to think that the 

 best plan would be to get a few of these gentlemen 

 together and let them decide on what they thought 

 was the proper food for infants. Let them agree on 

 standards, and let them perhaps undertake the business 

 of preparing articles for the Press. If he was in order he 

 would like to move that the matter be referred to the 

 Executive to consider whether something could not be done 

 in this country to utilize the Press as a source of educating 

 the general -public in the care of babies. 



Dr. A. E. NAISH (Sheffield) expressed the pleasure it had 

 given him to hear Dr. King, as he had for some time taken 

 an interest in reading of his work. His real object in rising, 

 however, was to ask how Dr. King got the average line he 

 showed in his chart, and how large were the variations 

 above and below the line in individual cases. He also would 

 like to know if Dr. King had come across many cases where 

 the children had been taking amounts considerably above 

 the line, but, notwithstanding, had been doing perfectly 

 well. The experience he had had was that variations above 

 the line were no detriment to the infant. 



Dr. ERIC PRITCHARD (London) said that with regard to 

 the feeding experiments which Dr. Truby King had referred 

 to, and especially with regard to the proposition he made 

 (and which had been made by other speakers) that there 

 should be some definite standard drawn up as to what 

 constituted the normal diet of an infant he would like 

 to say a few words. He did not know how Dr. King 

 had arrived at his own standard, but his own view 

 was that there was no such thing as a real standard. 

 Each child had a standard, and was a law unto itself, and 

 the amount of food which each particular child required 

 depended more on external temperature than anything else. 

 Inasmuch as eight-tenths of the whole food was required 

 for the purpose of keeping a child warm, it seemed illogical 

 that a child exposed to a high temperature should have the 

 same kind of food as a child exposed to a cold environment. 



