48o DISCUSSION 



and the manner in which they are discharged is so fundamental for the 

 national welfare that the proper equipment of parents for these tasks 

 demands the serious attention of all thoughtful people. The care and 

 feeding of a baby is practically a full-time occupation and one to which an 

 elementary knowledge of physiology, and especially of nutrition, could be 

 applied with great profit. It may be argued that maternal instinct is a 

 sufficient guide to mothers, but many human instincts are vague and fallible, 

 and whatever part instincts play in human affairs they cannot compensate 

 for lack of knowledge, since knowledge is of a superior order to instinct. 

 Instinct, for example, might inform a mother that her own milk is the 

 proper food for her infant, but it could not be expected to tell her that 

 cows' milk is relatively deficient in iron or that the ' cream line ' gives 

 little indication of the nutritive value of cows' milk. Again, instinct does 

 not tell us that heat regulation is not properly developed in the human 

 infant until some months after birth, and it is well known that ignorance of 

 this fact frequently leads to harmful over-clothing of infants through 

 misplaced maternal zeal. Moreover, even if our instincts sufficed to guide 

 us unerringly in the nutrition and nurture of children, they might at any 

 time be overruled or reversed by faulty reasoning based on erroneous 

 information. 



A very important recent advance in physiology is the discovery of the 

 influence of the diet of the mother during pregnancy on the physique and 

 health of her offspring and on the nutritive value of her milk during lacta- 

 tion. The diet of mothers at these times is one of the fundamental deter- 

 minants of the health and physique of the coming generation, and the 

 instruction of future mothers in dietetics is therefore essential to any modern 

 system of education. Further, the health of the child in pre-school days 

 is almost entirely in the hands of the mother — she feeds it, clothes it, and 

 attends to its every need. Whether she does these things well or ill depends 

 to a very great extent on her knowledge of the infant's needs, and this can 

 only be acquired by learning the elements of physiology and hygiene. 



During school life the child is still dependent on its parents for material 

 things, but intellectually parents are only one of many sources from which 

 it attempts to satisfy its insatiable desire for information. The intellect at 

 this time is little more than a receptacle for all sorts of information and is 

 very little used, as it is in adult life, for critical and discriminating examina- 

 tion. The child picks up most of his information from his parents, teachers 

 and companions, but his parents and teachers have the greatest influence 

 with him. School-time and adolescence is the great formative period of 

 life so far as habits are concerned. During this time ' the organism grows 

 to the mode in which it is exercised ' and habits are formed which determine 

 in very large measure the future career and health of the individual. The 

 importance for the public health of establishing habits of healthy living is 

 self-evident. It is true there is, in the teaching of elementary physiology 

 to children, a risk of that excessive introspection which is the father of fads 

 and prejudices, but the preventive of these is more and yet more knowledge. 

 Assuming proper upbringing, the maintenance of health for the adult is 

 mainly a personal matter, but long standing habits still dominate. If not 

 conducive to health these can be broken by will-power, but the exercise of 

 the will presupposes knowledge of the harmfulness of the habits. The 

 person who is unable to discipline his passions and emotions is their play- 

 thing and sooner or later will fall into bad health and become a less useful 

 member of society than he would otherwise be. Within the limits imposed 

 by heredity good health depends first on knowledge and then on self- 

 discipline : both of these are essential. 



