Jasper County Democrat, Volume 21, Number 18, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 June 1918 — OF INTEREST TO ALL MOTHERS [ARTICLE]

OF INTEREST TO ALL MOTHERS

“I want my baby to be weighed and measured for Uncle Sam, but I don’t want him to run the risk of catching measles or whooping cough,” said an anxious mother yesterday. Because the committee in charge of the weighing and measuring tesv in Rensselaer does not want that mother’s baby or any other to catch, measles or any other diseases, certain precautions recommended by the Children’s Bureau of the U. S. Department of Labor are being taken. In the first place mothers whose children are suffering from contagions diseases or have recently been exposed to themi are asked not to bring them to he weighed and measured. Cards can be given these mothers on which, if the child is well enough to make it desirable for him to be entered in the test, he can be weighed and measured at home.

The bureau has urged that in addition a nurse be assigned wherever possible to look over every child who comes to the weighing center so that any who show evidence of contagious disease, including bad colds, shall not he examined at the center, where they would expose other children to the danger of catching the diseases from Which they are suffering. Cards can be given to the parents of these children also to be filled out at home. The children’s bureau has recommended that appointments be made in advance for examinations and that children be examined by appointment only. In this way it will not be necessary for more than •two or three children with their mothers to be admitted to the waiting room at the same time. Mothers used often to say that they hoped John and. Sally would have the measles at the same time because it was so much less trouble. And where John had them Sally was likely to be given every opportunity to have them, too. But mothers are more and more realizing that reasonable precautions can often save both « Sally and John from* having measles at all, and that permanent injury and sometimes death may result from measles “or whooping cough. So they are making every effort to see that their children are not exposed to contagious diseases. Consequently in! the weighing and measuring test special precautions will be taken to see that large numbers of children are not crowd-

ed together and thue exposed to a risk of contracting contagious dSeeasee. MRS. JOHN I. GWJN, .Chairman. Child Welfare Committee.