ANf E-NATAL HYGIENE : DISCUSSION 377 



it. Another thing he had impressed upon expectant mothers 

 was that upon them there was a duty to produce a healthy 

 young life to this world, and that from the very beginning 

 it was for them to do all they could to make it fit to fight 

 life's battle. 



Dr. A. E. NAISH (Sheffield) said that at the risk of 

 flogging a dead horse he rose to speak on the question of 

 work; because if mothers were turned more or less into 

 invalids the general result would be bad. He thought Dr. 

 Truby King's speech on the subject was extremely in- 

 teresting. In the first place, one knew that the breast 

 feeding amongst the upper classes had become very much 

 less than amongst the lower classes and they might say 

 that a very large amount of this was due to unwillingness, 

 but the evidence of people like Dr. Holt all pointed very 

 much to the fact that very largely the better and upper 

 classes had not the ability for breast feeding. If that be 

 so, surely it must be due to some factor in the way they 

 lived, and he thought it was in favour of the evidence of 

 the need for taking plenty of exercise. Then he had distinct 

 evidence in many cases where he had been seeing people 

 who had been suckling their children and where they had 

 rather a poor supply of milk. It had been tested and the 

 quantity taken, and he had found quite definitely that where 

 they took regular simple daily exercise in the way of 

 going out for a walk it made a good deal of difference. 

 They actually had more milk and the child was more con- 

 tented on the days on which the mother took definite 

 exercise. Then he had felt sure that women who suffered 

 from vomiting would suffer less if they adopted a different 

 plan in their next pregnancy, and the experience in almost 

 every case was that if they rose early in the morning and 

 got about their daily work, if it did not stop the vomiting, 

 at least they were less troubled and they did better during 

 the pregnancy and better during the confinement and had 

 on the whole a better time afterwards. 



Mrs. ROGER GREEN (Burton-on-Trent) said she would 

 like to ask for a definition of exercise. Exercise and the 

 work of the mother in the home were two very different 

 things, and when they talked about the possibility of turning 

 the mangle they got nearer the point. That was a matter 

 which had a great bearing on premature births. Exercise 

 in the minds of the medical men and exercise in the case 

 of the working woman were two different things. 



Dr. ERIC PRITCHARD (London) said he was glad the 

 question of exercise had been discussed, because he had 

 felt all along that nothing promoted the health of the child 



