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132
Malnutrition 22
Rickets 9
Neuroses 14
Various 3
68
The number of babies who were not thriving on artificial feeds was
slightly smaller than in the previous year; if this means that the skill of
the mothers is improving, or that the number of bottle-fed babies is
diminishing, it is all to the good. There was, as usual, a large number
of pallid, undersized, catarrhal children. They are called Malnutrition
for want of a better word. The causes are various. In some cases a
previous infection, such as pneumonia, is responsible, or else a series of
minor infections, usually catarrhal, which have reduced the child's
health, his appetite, his digestion and his power of absorbing food. In
others the diet is wrongly chosen or given in the wrong way, as in the
all-too-common instances where the child is allowed to eat starchy food
between meals. They respond very well to treatment in the Wards,
especially when they have learned to digest a diet which is better chosen
than that to which they are accustomed.
The neurotics were mostly cases of food-refusal, a condition brought
about generally by an excess of zeal on the parents' part in trying to
make the child eat. A few days in the right atmosphere effect an almost
miraculous cure.
The results obtained among the in-patients are as follows:—
Recovered 62
Improved 1
Transferred to Hospitals 2
Removed by Parents 3
68
Although these figures do give an idea of what is being done, the real
way to understand is to see the babies—to see a thin, miserable, crying
child go home plump, sleek and rosy; or a drooping, pot-bellied, undernourished
little boy or girl become in a short time sturdy, upright, the
richer by several pounds of added weight. Regular physical exercises