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148
attitude in a matter of this sort, and pictures of sun-bathing became a
common-place. The artificiality of the mercury vapour lamp has been
insisted on by the medical officer in charge of the light department at
St. Katharine's ever since he started work there. And it has been his
constant policy to close down the lamp room each summer and to persuade
the parents to bring their children instead to the little garden we possess.
There, with the department's specially trained nurse exercising supervision
an increasingly large attendance has grown. Clothing has been
gradually shed until babies got accustomed to complete exposure for
increasing stretches of time, and toddlers learnt to play with toys, clad
only in shoes and shorts. (See illustrations.) Six years ago the numbers
weie small. But the benefits were remarked and discussed until for the
past three years progress has been rapid. The garden is filled morning
and afternoon. Those attending the ordinary welfare clinics have copied
the rules enjoined for ailing children, and have caught the pioneers'
enthusiasm. Sixty or more mothers may be seen in the garden waiting
their turn to have their children weighed or inspected, the babies on their
knees completely uncovered, the toddlers playing equally unclothed.
Some of these children now actually rival the examples set by Rollier,
for they are tanned a deep mahogany brown all over. The parents are
using their own yards and gardens, and even accede to the children's
request to play stripped in the streets. Others have carried the practice
into the public parks and have stood up courageously to accusations of
indecency or lunacy; have even borne without retaliation the suggestion
that the pigment was derived fioni a daik ancestry. But it is among the
quite young, almost new-born that perhaps the most astonishing results
have been obtained when the old ideas of protection are remembered.
There is a quite considerable group attending the consultations of under
six months of age, some of them only three months old, the skin of whose
trunks and limbs is deeply bronzed by steady and repeated exposure.
The mothers of some of them have adopted the recommendation to give
the daily bath in the backyard. The exposure has been skilfully and
systematically conducted and the well-being of the children has impressed
and silenced ciitics. Less often than formerly we see the unhappy results
of an exhausting whole day excursion to the seaside planned and undertaken
in the baby's interest. The common outcome was a scorched face
and blistered limbs, fatigue, fretfulness, fever and food refusal for perhaps
several days. The mothers have learnt better methods, and an entirely
changing attitude towards theii children's requirements is steadily
spreading. The benefit extends far beyond the actual weeks during which
the treatment is carried out. For the child accustomed to being practically
clotheless throughout the summer registers the most vehement protests