27 страница. The primitive care of a newborn infant has been a matter of severe criticism by modernists especially those who have gone among them to enlighten them in

The primitive care of a newborn infant has been a matter of severe criticism by modernists especially those who have gone among them to enlighten them in modern ways of child rearing. It is common practice among many primitive tribes to wrap the newborn infant in an absorbent moss, which is changed daily. A newborn infant, however, does not begin having regular all over baths for a few weeks after birth. While this method is orthodox among the primitives it is greatly deplored as a grossly cruel and ignoble treatment by most moderns. Dr. William Forest Patrick of Portland, Oregon was deeply concerned over the regularly occurring rash that develops on newborn infants shortly after they are first washed and groomed. He had a suspicion that Nature had a way of taking care of this. In 1931 he left the original oily varnish on several babies for two weeks without the ordinary washing and greasing. He found them completely free from the skin irritation and infection which accompanies modern treatment. This method was adopted by the Multanomah County Hospital of Oregon which now reports that in 1,916 cases of unwashed, unanointed babies only two cases of pyodermia occurred. They record that each day the clothing was changed and buttocks washed with warm water. Beyond this the infants were not handled. Dr. Patrick states that within twelve hours after birth by Nature's method the infant's skin is clear, and Nature's protective film has entirely disappeared. In my observations of the infant's care among primitive races I have been continually impressed with the great infrequency with which we ever hear a primitive child cry or express any discomfort from the treatment it receives. Of course, when hungry they make their wants known. The primitive mother is usually very prompt, if possible, to feed her child.

Among the important applications that can be made of the wisdom of the primitive races is one related to methods for the prevention of those physical defects which occur in the formative period and which result in physical, mental and moral crippling. When I visited the native Fijian Museum at Suva, I found the director well-informed with regard to the practices of the natives in the matter of producing healthy normal children. He provided me with a shell of a species of spider crab which the natives use for feeding the mothers so that the children will be physically excellent and bright mentally, clearly indicating that they were conscious that the mother's food influenced both the physical and mental capacity of the child. The care with which expectant mothers were treated was unique in many of the Pacific Islands. For example, in one group we were informed that the mother told the chief immediately when she became pregnant. The chief called a feast in celebration and in honor of the new member that would come to join their colony. At this feast the members of the colony pledged themselves to adopt the child if its own parents should die. At this feast the chief appointed one or two young men to be responsible for going to the sea from day to day to secure the special sea foods that expectant mothers need to nourish the child. Recent studies on the vitamin content of crabs have shown that they are among the richest sources available. We have then for modern mothers the message from these primitives to use the sea foods liberally, both during the preparatory period in anticipation of pregnancy and during that entire period. In Fig. 129 will be seen a woman of one of the Fiji Islands who had gone several miles to the sea to get this particular type of lobster-crab which she believed, and which her tribal custom had demonstrated, was particularly efficient for producing a highly perfect infant.

FIG. 129. This Fiji woman has come a long distance to gather special foods needed for the production of a healthy child. These and many primitive people have understood the necessity for special foods before marriage, during gestation, during the nursing period and for rebuilding before the next pregnancy.

For the Indians of the far North this reinforcement was accomplished by supplying special feedings of organs of animals. Among the Indians in the moose country near the Arctic circle a larger percentage of the children were born in June than in any other month. This was accomplished, I was told, by both parents eating liberally of the thyroid glands of the male moose as they came down from the high mountain areas for the mating season, at which time the large protuberances carrying the thyroids under the throat were greatly enlarged.

Among the Eskimos I found fish eggs were eaten by the childbearing women, and the milt of the male salmon by the fathers for the purpose of reinforcing reproductive efficiency.

The coastal Indians in Peru ate the so-called angelote egg, an organ of the male fish of an ovoviviparous species. These organs were used by the fathers-to-be and the fish eggs by the mothers-to-be.

In Africa I found many tribes gathering certain plants from swamps and marshes and streams, particularly the water hyacinth. These plants were dried and burned for their ashes which were put into the foods of mothers and growing children. A species of water hyacinth is shown in Fig. 130. The woman shown in Fig. 130, with an enormous goiter, had come down from a nine-thousand-foot level in the mountains above Lake Edward. Here all the drinking water was snow water which did not carry iodine. She had come down from the high area to the sixthousand-foot level to gather the water hyacinth and other plants to obtain the ashes from these and other iodine carrying plants to carry back to her children to prevent, as she explained, the formation of "big neck," such as she had. The people living at the six-thousand-foot level also use the ashes of these plants.

FIG. 130. This African woman with goiter has come down from the 9000 foot level in the mountains in Belgian Congo near the source of the Nile to a 6000 foot level to gather special plants for burning to carry the ashes up to her family to prevent goiter in her children. Right, a Nile plant, a water hyacinth burned for its ashes.

Among many of the tribes in Africa there were not only special nutritional programs for the women before pregnancy, but also during the gestation period, and again during the nursing period.

As an illustration of the remarkable wisdom of these primitive tribes, I found them using for the nursing period two cereals with unusual properties. One, was a red millet which was not only high in carotin but had a calcium content of five to ten times that of most other cereals. They used also for nursing mothers in several tribes in Africa, a cereal called by them linga-linga. This proved to be the same cereal under the name of quinua that the Indians of Peru use liberally, particularly the nursing mothers. The botanical name is quinoa. This cereal has the remarkable property of being not only rich in minerals, but a powerful stimulant to the flow of milk. I have found no record of the use of similar cereals among either the English or American peoples. In Chapter 14, I presented data indicating that the Peruvians, who were descendants of the old Chimu culture on the coast of Peru, used fish eggs liberally during the developmental period of girls in order that they might perfect their physical preparation for the later responsibility of motherhood. These fish eggs were an important part of the nutrition of the women during their reproductive period. They were available both at the coast market of Peru and as dried fish eggs in the highland markets, whence they were obtained by the women in the high Sierras to reinforce their fertility and efficiency for childbearing. A chemical analysis of the dried fish eggs that I brought to my laboratory from Alaska as well as of samples brought from other places has revealed them to be a very rich source of body-building minerals and vitamins. Here again, I have found no record of their use in our modern civilization for reinforcing physical development and maternal efficiency for reproduction. As I have noted in Chapter 15 special nutrition was provided for the fathers by tribes in the Amazon jungle, as well as by the coastal tribes.

Professor Drummond, a British bio-chemist, in discussing the question of the modern decline in fertility, before the Royal Society of Medicine (4) suggested that the decline in the birth rate in European countries, during the last fifty years, was due, largely, to the change in national diets which resulted from the removal of vitamins B and E from grains when the embryo or germ was removed in the milling process. He called attention to the fact that the decline in the birth rate corresponded directly with the time when the change was made in the milling process so that refined flour was made available instead of the entire grain product.

Of the many problems on which the experience of the primitive races can throw light, probably none is more pressing than practical procedures for improving child life. Since this has been shown to be largely dependent upon the architectural design, as determined by the health of the parental germ cells and by the prenatal environment of the child, the program that is to be successful must begin early enough to obviate these various disturbing forces. The normal determining factors that are of hereditary origin may be interrupted in a given generation but need not become fixed characteristics in the future generations. This question of parental nutrition, accordingly, constitutes a fundamental determining factor in the health and physical perfection of the offspring.

One of the frequent problems brought to my attention has to do with the responsibility of young men and women in the matter of the danger of transmitting their personal deformities to their offspring. Many, indeed, with great reluctance and sense of personal loss decline marriage because of this fear, a fear growing out of the current teaching that their children will be marked as they have been.

On the presumption that all mentally crippled individuals will be in danger of transmitting these qualities to their offspring there is a strong movement continually in operation toward segregating such individuals or incapacitating them by sterilization. Several primitive racial stocks have produced large populations without criminals and defectives by means of an adequate nutritional program which provided normal development and function. May it not be that even our defectives, when they have resulted from poisoning of germ cells or interference with an adequate normal intrauterine environment, may be able to build a society with a high incidence of perfection, that will progressively return toward Nature's ideal of human beings with normal physical, mental and moral qualities? Because of its interpretation of the individual's responsibility for his mental and moral qualities, society has not only undertaken to protect itself from the acts of so-called unsocial individuals but has proceeded to treat them as though they were responsible for the injury that society has done to them. Does it not seem inevitable that this apparently false attitude will change if it be demonstrated that they are the result of a program of inadequate nutrition for the parents.

As we have seen, the children born in many of the families of primitive racial stocks after the parents have adopted our modernized dietary, may have marked changes in the facial and dental arch forms. In our modernized white civilization this change occurs so frequently that in a considerable percentage of the families there is seen a progressive narrowing of the dental arches in the succeeding children of the same family. Since the position of the permanent teeth which erupt at from seven to twelve years of age, can be determined by x-rays early in child life, this procedure provides an opportunity to anticipate deformities that will make their appearance with the eruption of the permanent teeth.

In Fig. 131, may be seen the x-rays of the upper arches of three children. Even under conditions causing the permanent teeth to develop irregularly the deciduous dental arch will not show the deformity that will be expressed later in the permanent dental arch. The abnormal placement of the developing permanent teeth, however, will show the deformity that is later to be produced in the face even though the deciduous arch is normal in design. Both deciduous and permanent teeth can be seen at the same time. In Fig. 131 it will be seen that there is a progressive deformity revealed in the position of the permanent teeth in these three children. (Most severe in the youngest.) This narrowing of the curve made by the permanent teeth is a condition characteristic of a large number of individuals, occurring in at least 25 per cent of the families throughout the United States; in some districts the percentage will reach 50 to 75 per cent.

FIG. 131. X-rays of teeth of three children in one family show in the teeth and upper arch a progressive injury in the younger children as indicated by the progressive narrowing of the placement of the tooth buds of the upper permanent teeth. Note the narrowing curve of the arch.

Another striking illustration of this progressive injury in the younger members of the family, detected early by the x-rays, is shown in Fig. 132. Note the breadth of the arch of the permanent teeth of the oldest child (to the left), and the marked narrowing of the arch of the two younger children (to the right).

FIG. 132. These x-rays illustrate the progressive injury in the two younger children in this family. Note the progressive narrowing of the permanent arch illustrated by the lapping of the laterals over the centrals in the youngest, and decreasing distance between the cuspids.

While the application of orthodontic procedures for the improve- ment of the facial form and arrangement of the teeth will make a vast improvement in facial expression, that procedure will not modify disturbances in other parts of the body, such as the abnormal underdevelopment of the hips and pelvic bones. If an improvement in nutrition for the mothers-to-be is adequately provided in accordance with the procedures of the primitives, it should be possible to prevent this progressive lowering of the capacity of our modern women to produce physically fit children.

Fig. 133 is another illustration. The oldest child, ten years of age, is shown at the upper left. She has a marked underdevelopment of the width of the face and dental arches. The nostrils are abnormally narrow and she tends to be a mouth breather. She is very nervous and is becoming stooped. In the lower left photograph, is shown an x-ray of the narrowed upper arch. At the right is shown her younger sister, six years of age. It will be seen that the proportions of her face are much more normal and that she breathes with complete ease through her nose. She has none of the nervous trouble of her older sister. In the x-rays, below, at the right, it will be seen that her permanent arch, as indicated by the positions of the permanent teeth, although not so far advanced as that of her sister, has good design. The history of these pregnancies is of interest. The duration of labor for the first child was fifty-three hours and for the second three hours. Following the birth of the first child the mother was a partial invalid for several months. Following that of the second child the experience of childbirth made but slight impression on the strength and health of the mother. During the first pregnancy no special effort was made to reinforce the nutrition of the mother. During the second pregnancy the selection of foods was made on the basis of nutrition of the successful primitives. This included the use of milk, green vegetables, sea foods, organs of animals and the reinforcement of the fat-soluble vitamins by very high vitamin butter and high vitamin natural cod liver oil. It is a usual experience that the difficulties of labor are greatly decreased and the strength and vitality of the child enhanced where the mother has adequately reinforced nutrition along these lines during the formative period of the child.

FIG. 133. In this family the first child to the left was most injured in the formative period as shown in the form of the face and dental arches above and x-rays below. The first child required fifty-three hours of labor and the second three hours, preceded by special nutrition of the mother.

The problem of maternal responsibility with regard to the physical capacity of their offspring to reproduce a healthy new generation comprises one of the most serious problems confronting modern degenerating society. In a previous chapter I have discussed the difficulty that zoological garden directors have had in rearing members of the cat family in captivity. It has been a very general experience until the modern system of feeding animal organs was instituted, that unless the mothers-to-be had themselves been born in the jungle the lack of development of the pelvic arch would frequently prevent normal birth of their young. In the Cleveland Zoo a very valuable tigress, that had been born in captivity, found it impossible to give birth to her young. Although a Caesarian operation was performed, she lost her life. The young also died. One of the veterinaries told me that the pelvic arch was entirely too small to allow the young to pass through the birth canal. Studies of the facial bones of this animal showed marked abnormality in development.

The result of disturbance in the growth of the bones of the head and of the development of general body design is quite regularly a narrowing of the entire body, and often there is a definite lengthening. Statistics have been published relative to the increase in the height of girls in colleges during the last few decades. This is probably a bad rather than a good sign as actually it is an expression of this change in the shape of the body. I am informed by gynecologists that narrowing of the pelvic arch is one of the factors that is contributing to the increased difficulties that are encountered in childbirth by our modern generation.

A typical case illustrating the relationship between the lack of pelvic development and deformity of the face, is presented in Fig. 134. This girl presented a very marked underdevelopment of the lower third of the face which produced the appcarance of protrusion of her upper teeth so that it was quite difficult or impossible for her to cover them with her lips. An operation to improve her appearance consisted in removing the first bicuspid on each side above and then moving the bone carrying the anterior teeth backward with appliances, the width of the two removed teeth. This changed the relationship of the teeth as shown in the two upper views in Fig. 134. The operation greatly improved her facial appearance and she lost the inferiority complex which had prevented her from mingling with young people. When she went to the hospital for her first child, there was special concern because of her weak heart, and every effort was made to obtain a normal birth rather than one by Caesarian section. This proved impossible and the Caesarian operation was done. Great difficulty was experienced in saving the life of the mother and child. Her boyish figure, of which she had been so proud, and which had been a part of her serious deformity, during her formative period had nearly resulted in her undoing. She nursed her baby for some time but the overdraft of reproduction on her frail body was so great that she aged rapidly, her back weakened and she stooped forward as shown in Fig. 134, lower right. In the view at the lower left, it will be seen that the teeth remained in their new position. A point to keep in mind is that her physical deficiency was probably directly caused by an inadequate nutrition of her mother during the intrauterine development and prior to conception. It is, of course, possible that the father also contributed a poisoned germ cell that constituted a disturbance in the architectural design of the offspring. In this connection, it is important to have in mind the tragic influence of a program of deliberate starvation of mothers-to-be in order that the bones of the baby may be soft and thus provide an easy birth. Some literature has been published indicating the foods that would be efficient in accomplishing this. This means almost certain wreckage or handicapping of the child's life.

FIG. 134. This girl suffered with a serious deformity of her face. She also had very contracted pelvic arch. The facial deformity was improved as shown. She nearly lost her life with the birth of her first baby which was removed by Caesarian operation. Note her badly deformed back from the overload of reproduction.

Information from many sources may suggest that the expectant mother needs more calcium and more vitamin D. She may go to the pharmacy with a prescription or on her own initiative obtain calcium tablets and so-called vitamin D as a synthetic preparation. We are concerned here with data which will throw light on the comparative value of the treatment the modern mother will thus give herself with that that the primitive mother would provide.

Dr. Wayne Brehm who is associated with two Columbus, Ohio, hospitals has recently published the results (5) of a study of the effect of the treatment received in 540 obstetrical cases divided into six groups of ninety individuals each, on the basis on which their nutrition was reinforced in order to study the comparative effects of the different treatments. The reinforcement of the diet consisted in Group 1 of taking calcium and synthetic vitamin D as viosterol; Group 2, calcium alone; Group 3, viosterol alone; Group 4, calcium and cod liver oil; Group 5, cod liver oil alone and Group 6, no reinforcement. For those receiving the calcium and viosterol there was extensive calcification in the placentae, marked closure of the fontanelle (the normal opening in the top of the infant skull) and marked calcification in the kidneys. For those receiving calcium alone there was no placental calcification, slight closure of the fontanelle and no calcification of the kidneys. Group 3 receiving viosterol had moderate to marked placental calcification, moderate closure of the fontanelle and no calcification of the kidneys. Those receiving cod liver oil alone had very slight placental calcification, slight fontanelle closure and no calcification in the kidneys. Those receiving no reinforcement had very slight placental calcification, normal fontanelle closures and no calcification of the kidneys. The effect on the mother was a prolonging of labor in Group 1 and at birth the fetal heads were less moulded not being able to adjust their shape to the shape of the birth tube. These infants had a general appearance of ossification or postmaturity. This strongly emphasizes the great desirability of using Nature's natural foods instead of modern synthetic substitutes.

It is a matter of great importance that the most serious disturbances in reproduction and childbirth are occurring in the most civilized parts of the world. In Chapter 19 I have referred to the important work of Dr. Kathleen Vaughan entitled "Safe Childbirth." She has not only had wide experience among several tribes in India and in the British Hospitals but has collected a large quantity of information regarding the experience of many races throughout the world. Her data strongly emphasize the necessity that the growing girl shall be allowed to have an active outdoor life not only until the completion of the building of her body at about fourteen years of age, but through the child-bearing period. In practically all countries a restricted sedentary indoor life greatly increases the complications associated with childbirth. She quotes Whitridge Williams to the effect that: "At the onset of pregnancy the (males) are 125 to 100 (females), and he adds that sex is determined in the germ cells, primarily or immediately after their union, and is immutable by the time segmentation of the ovum begins." Notwithstanding this advantage, prenatal and infant mortality reduces the proportion of boys to a level below that of girls. Dr. Vaughan in her reference to the data on the annual report of the chief medical officer, the Minister of Health, states as follows:

Our infant mortality returns show that over half the number of infants dying before they are a year old die before they have lived a month (and 6,744 of them before they are twenty-four hours old), strongly suggesting that their vitality was impaired by the process of birth. The figures of those who did not survive one month are 20,060, and of these more than half are males. So we lose over ten thousand boys every year under a month old! (Public Health Report, No. 55, British). Hear what Dr. Peter McKinley has to say on the subject. "The death rate of infants in the period immediately subsequent to birth is nine times as high as that which occurs later in the first years of life." He shows how the difficulty experienced by the mothers during parturition leads to the death of infants at and just after birth, and says in this connection, "Infant deaths under a month are significantly associated with the death rates of mothers in childbearing." He quotes Netherland statistics showing that of stillbirths due to difficulty during birth, male stillbirths predominate, and says, "These figures might be taken in support of the view that the greater size of the male head is a cause of some greater difficulty in labour than there is with a female birth." Here, indeed, in civilized childbirth is the laboratory where the sex of the population is finally determined-the actual births of boys and girls are nearly equal in number, but the small ones slip through; the larger children are the ones who are killed during birth, or so damaged that life is heavily handicapped, and we are left with an enormous surplus female population. This destruction of male infants, which goes on day by day and year by year, puts the consequences of the Great War into the shade. Our surplus female population (now reaching over one and a half million in excess of the male) is directly due to it. We have no need of Pharaoh's midwives to kill our boys off at birth (Exodus i. 16). Civilization does it unaided, for all civilized races as they pass their zenith and are on the downgrade have eventually had to face the same problem, the outnumbering of men by women, and most of them have met it as the East does to-day by female infanticide. A more intelligent policy would be to prevent the males dying at birth. We see that difficult childbirth leads to a high maternal mortality, but it is also the cause of a high infant mortality falling most heavily upon the male infants, and it is also responsible for the production of mental defectives in ever-increasing numbers.

Dr. Vaughan's work places emphasis on the necessity that the human body be properly built, especially that of the mother-to-be. She shows clearly that the shape of the pelvis is determined by the method of life and the nutrition. In all primitive tribes living an outdoor life childbirth is easy and labor is of short duration. She shows that this is associated with a round pelvis and that the distortion of the pelvis to a flattened or kidney shape, even to a small degree, greatly reduces the capacity and therefore the ease with which the infant head may pass through the birth canal. In Dr. Vaughan's wide experience she has observed two ways by which a rough estimate of the pelvic shape and capacity may be anticipated: first, by the gait of the individual, because the angle of the hips is determined by the shape of the pelvis; and second, by the teeth and jaws. She has recognized an association between facial and dental arch deformities and deformed pelvis.

During my investigations in eastern Australia I was informed that the birth rate among the whites had declined over a large area and to such an extent that many families had no children and many women could produce only one child. The diets used in that district were very largely refined white-flour products, sugar, polished rice, vegetable fats, canned goods and a limited amount of meat. The alarm regarding the declining birth rate in Australia has recently been a matter of discussion by the New South Wales legislature as indicated by an Associated Press dispatch from Sydney, Australia, dated August 1, 1938: "A 'stork derby' with sweepstakes prizes was proposed in the New South Wales Legislature today to boost Australia's falling birth rate."

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