Read Ebook: The Child in the Midst A Comparative Study of Child Welfare in Christian and Non-Christian Lands by Platt Mary Schauffler

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Three causes have led to it:--

The little ones were usually destroyed immediately after birth.... The reasons for such a usage, widely established among such people, and perpetuated through many generations, are worthy of close attention.

Cruelty is not a Hindu characteristic.... But the people are callous and apathetic. They would not deliberately inflict suffering and take pleasure in it, but they would not move hand or foot to rescue such as were greatly suffering.... This goes far to explain the unchallenged prevalence for ages of such atrocities as suttee and infanticide....

"A mother of sons" is one of the highest compliments that can be paid to a wife; "a mother of daughters" is one of the most contemptuous and scornful of all terms of reproach. This explains the gladness with which the birth of sons is welcomed, the disappointment manifest at the birth of daughters, and the disposition to put them away....

But whilst these were the causes generally operative, there were two special ones, which were influential among the haughty, high-caste Rajputs and kindred tribes--the difficulty of procuring suitable husbands for their daughters, when the customary age for marriage arrived; with the supposed disgrace of having unmarried daughters, and the difficulty of defraying the heavy expenses which usage demands....

Happily, the crime is abating through the persistent action of the government, and yet more because of that great wave of renewed opinion and sentiment passing over the people. But that this crime is yet frequent, and the law evaded, is evident.

Was there a dry eye in the auditorium at Northfield when Mrs. James Cochran, only a few weeks before her death, told of the little girl babies in China who are thrown out to die? All could feel the throbbing love of her mother heart as she told the story in such simple words to the hundreds of young women gathered before her. Who among them could ever again be guiltless if she did not do her share towards saving the baby girls of China? Listen to her words:

Confucianism wants no little girls, for they are of no use. It is very nice to have one or two, but in the part of China from which I come it is absolutely a custom, if there are more than two or three, to murder the others in some horrible way. One night one of my pupils came to my class very soberly. At first she whispered to the women about her and then they began to whisper to each other. Finally I inquired the reason. One of the women replied, "She is feeling badly because they are killing a little baby down at her house."

"Killing a little baby!"

"Yes," the girl replied, "they have three little girls and another girl has just come. I feel so badly because she is a dear, fat, little baby. I did not want to see her die, but my sister is determined to kill her."

"Oh," I said, "you go and bring that baby to me. I can take care of her."

So she went, but before she arrived the baby had been murdered in a way too dreadful to tell.

It is rather entertaining to pick up, one after another, books and magazine articles written for children about the children of missionary lands, and to find them all starting out with the proposition, "Children are very much the same the world around." How are we going to reconcile this statement with the fact that some children survive and even thrive upon treatment that would mean certain death to others? What would happen to the little American baby first opening his eyes on the world, if he were taken out of doors as the babies are in Central Africa between four and five o'clock in the morning, when the cold night winds are still abroad, and cold water were dashed over him, and he were left naked out there to dry? The cold water treatment of the Africans and the Lao differs widely from the baths of little ones in Japan where the water must be nearly boiling hot to be of the proper temperature. But in Persia it would be sure death to a newborn baby to be bathed at all,--he must be carefully rubbed with salt as were the properly-cared-for infants of Ezekiel's time! Then into a cradle he is not laid, but strapped, wound round and round until his little legs and arms are rigid and immovable, and the soft bones of the back of his head are flattened as he lies there day after day. Oh, how we long to pick him up and let him change places occasionally with one of the imperial babies of Japan, who must be held in some one's arms day and night from the time of his birth until he can walk. But no, there he must lie, and, in order that he may not take cold and fall a victim to that dangerous enemy, fresh air, over the ridgepole of the cradle are thrown various coverings, most of which hang to the floor. A missionary told me that once when she wanted to look at a Syrian baby, she took off four blankets which had been thrown over the whole cradle, and then removed a Turkish towel folded double over the child's face.

It is strange to learn in how many lands the mothers feel that they must wrap and tie and bind and swathe their babies until they are deprived of all power of motion, and lives and health are sadly endangered by too much rather than too little clothing. The Chinese mother dresses her baby in a tiny wadded jacket, then another, then another, saying perhaps, "It is five jackets cold to-day." He is wrapped and tied up until the bundle with a baby at the centre can be rolled on the floor without hurting him, or may perchance act as a life-preserver if he falls off the houseboat into the canal. It is pretty sure to keep afloat until it can be pulled in with a boat hook.

Very differently clad are the "Coral Island Brownies" or the babies of Africa, who are not hampered with any clothes at all, and as they grow older simply wear a fringe of grass or a strip of calico about their waists.

It is easy to trace many of the cases of terrible eye disease among children in Egypt, Syria, and other warm countries to the utter lack of any protection to the eyes from the glaring sunlight. Often boat women are seen rowing in the bright sunlight in China with babies asleep on their backs, and nothing over the sensitive little eyes as their heads bob up and down in time with the oars.

It is often a great shock to the American missionary mother to see little heads wrapped and swathed in numerous cloths and kerchiefs, while the little feet are blue with cold. But then, the shock is reciprocal, and, while the mother is off conducting a meeting, her nurse is carefully making up for her negligence by wrapping up the head of the missionary baby until he is bathed in perspiration!

The study of Infant Mortality is now engrossing the thought and attention of many earnest men and women. It is most difficult to get vital statistics from any non-Christian lands in order to give comparative tables. In comparing the mortality statistics of the United States for 1890 and 1909 we find marked improvement in the "opportunity for life and health" granted to American children. If George B. Mangold is right in saying that "the infant and child mortality of a people is a barometer of their social progress," then we have reason to believe that our land is making real advance in this respect.

In 1890 the total number of deaths of children under five years was 307,562; in 1909 the total number of deaths of children under five years was 196,534.

From the first mortality table of the principal cities of the world in 1912 that has been made public we learn that--

Stockholm has 82 deaths per 1,000 births. London ,, 90 ,, ,, ,, ,, New York ,, 105 ,, ,, ,, ,,

Contrast with these figures the following, based upon careful study and research by high authorities:--

"It is by no means improbable that more than half the whole number of Chinese children die before they are two years old."

In Syria the infant mortality is 75% of the births.

In Persia the infant mortality is 85% of the births.

At a meeting of the National Association for the Prevention of Infant Mortality in Great Britain, the Right Honorable John Burns, P. C., M. P., speaking on "Infant Life Protection" gave many interesting facts and figures to show how infant mortality is being decreased in Great Britain through scientific and systematic efforts along many lines. One sentence is significant:

"Let me decide the food, the home, and the condition of life of every child from birth to seven years of age, and the rest of mankind can do with the children after seven years of age what they like."

Constant and increasing attention is being paid in these days to the proper feeding of children, to the study of dietetics, to the preparation of suitable food for infants, and to the proper intervals for administering the food. Any mother of average intelligence in our land may secure one of the carefully prepared books such as Dr. Holt's on "The Care and Feeding of Children," or the smaller leaflets such as "What Children Should Eat," and by making a study of them and of her child may hope to see that it is well and properly nourished. But what chance is there for the mother in Asia or Africa who, even if she cares to learn, has no means of knowing how to feed her child properly?

Quite different was this set of mothers who had long been in contact with the missionaries, from the mother in a Persian village who begged a missionary to put a cent on her baby's head and write a prayer that it might not die as six others had done in that family. The missionary replied with some severity that it was much more to the purpose to have the mother learn to take proper care of it, for the baby was not yet a year old and she was feeding it with meat and fruit.

In most if not all of the non-Christian lands whose child life we are studying there seems to be the tendency to two extremes. The children are often nursed by the mother for two, three, five, or even more years, and at the same time they are allowed to eat anything that their fancy dictates or that they can get hold of. Mrs. Noyes of China says that if the mother has no milk she cannot afford to buy canned milk, and of course fresh milk is entirely out of her reach. So she chews rice most carefully until it is soft and mushy, then takes it from her own mouth and puts it, germs and all, into the baby's mouth. This diet is supplemented with rich cakes and the inevitable tea. Another missionary tells us that, if a child in China is ill, his appetite is tempted by rich, heavy food or fruit, and adds, "the mortality of children is frightful."

Mrs. Underwood, an experienced mother and physician who has lived and worked many years in Korea, says:

Every imaginable practice which comes under the definition of unhygienic or unsanitary is common. Even young children in arms eat raw and green cucumbers, unpeeled, acrid berries, and heavy, soggy bread. They bolt quantities of hot or cold rice, with a tough, indigestible cabbage, washed in ditch water, prepared with turnips, and flavored with salt and red pepper. Green fruit of every kind is eaten with perfect recklessness of all the laws of nature, and with impunity....

But even these, so to speak, galvanized-iron interiors are not always proof. It takes time, but every five or six years, by great care and industry, a bacillus develops itself ... and then there is an epidemic of cholera.

It is one of the most difficult lessons to impress on those who have become Christians that true Christianity, lived out to its logical conclusion, includes all that proper physical care of the child which, with the right mental and spiritual training, shall prepare it to take its place in the world.

Dr. Exner, recently in physical educational work in the Y. M. C. A. at Shanghai, says:--

"The need of the knowledge of hygiene has a very definite bearing on the child problem. Thousands upon thousands of children are killed simply for the lack of knowledge of the simplest elements of feeding and care. To illustrate: A well educated Chinese teacher, graduate of a mission school, fed his five months' old daughter a piece of rich cake. It developed intestinal trouble from which it died in spite of expert medical care. When I expressed my sympathy, he said, 'Well, it is the Lord's will.' I added to myself, 'You should know better!'"

How much easier it is to say piously, "It is the Lord's will," than to take trouble and bear expense and lay aside age-long custom and prejudice in order that little ones may live! But we must not judge too harshly when we remember how long it has taken more enlightened lands to learn the great value of the lives of the children and how to care for these lives. Rather should we be all the more ready to send and carry to them the light and knowledge that have come to us. Then there will be fewer such scenes as one missionary mother witnessed in Syria. It was in a Jewish family where there were four little girls. The baby was a mass of sores from head to foot, and the missionary physician said that they were merely the result of mal-nutrition. But the mother said that her husband was utterly unwilling to buy a little milk each day,--"It is not worth while, for she is only another little girl."

Which is more harmful to a child, reckless, indiscriminate over-feeding or under-feeding and starvation diet? In lands swept periodically by famine or flood or devastated by war and massacre, there are thousands of little children who literally starve to death while other thousands continue to exist,--but what an existence it is! How can it but have its evil effect on the mind and morals of a child as well as on its physical well-being to be deprived of proper or sufficient nourishment during the years of growth and development? If child welfare is the legitimate, rightful responsibility of every Christian woman, then it behooves us to see that such scenes as the following cease to be possible anywhere in the world.

One mother, a widow with four children dependent on her, told me, with tears streaming down her face, how she had tried to throw away the skeleton-like little baby she carried in her arms, but she said the child always found its way back to her, and she added, "It is not easy to give one's own child away." She said she felt sometimes she would just have to drink poison, and put an end to her miserable existence, and one of the others asked her what would become of her children if she did that, and she said, with despair in every feature, "Don't ask me."

"Health," we are told by Dr. E. T. Devine, "is influenced by the occupations and habits of growing children; by their play and their attendance at school; by the attention given to their eyesight, hearing, breathing, and digestion, to their spines, and to the arches of their feet, to their position at the desk, and to the type from which their text books are printed; by the readiness with which they make friends and so enter into the natural sports and exercises of childhood; by the development of their self-control, and their more or less unconscious acceptance of standards of conduct and principles of action which will be their ultimate safeguard against those diseases and weaknesses which come from indulgence of wrong appetites and desires."

Judged by these standards, what chances have the children of Asia and Africa and the Pacific Islands for being safeguarded against disease and weakness and death? Consider the one matter of "attention to the arches of their feet" and compare such a standard of health with the age-long custom of foot-binding in China, and what hope is there for perfect, blooming health among the women of China or their children? A full description of the horrible custom of foot-binding may be found in Dr. James S. Dennis's "Christian Missions and Social Progress" . The effects of it upon the little girl victims are thus described by one who has every right to speak on the subject.

Mrs. Archibald Little, whose position as president of the Natural-feet Society has given her special reason for investigating, says in her book, "Intimate China": "During the first three years the girlhood of China presents a most melancholy spectacle. Instead of a hop, skip, and a jump, with rosy cheeks like the little girls of England, the poor little things are leaning heavily on a stick somewhat taller than themselves, or carried on a man's back, or sitting sadly crying. They have great black lines under their eyes, and a special curious paleness that I have never seen except in connection with foot-binding. Their mothers sleep with a big stick by the bedside, with which to get up and beat the little girl should she disturb the household by her wails; but not uncommonly she is put to sleep in an outhouse. The only relief she gets is either from opium, or from hanging her feet over the edge of her wooden bedstead, so as to stop the circulation. The Chinese saying is, "For each pair of bound feet there has been a whole kang, or big bath, full of tears." And they say that one girl out of ten dies of foot-binding or its after-effects."

Among the changes that are sweeping over China, the Anti-foot-binding Movement ranks high in importance. It is receiving daily impetus by reason of all the new things Chinese women and girls want to do, which are impossible to accomplish unless they can walk instead of hobble. When this movement has really conquered the custom and "fashion" of centuries, there will be a better health report from the girls of China.

Utter carelessness or ignorance of the first principles of cleanliness is responsible for much ill-health and death. A "swat-the-fly campaign" would save thousands of unprotected baby faces from being covered with loathsome disease or disfigured with dangerous eye trouble, but it would encounter not only hopeless inertia,--it would arouse serious religious opposition. In some countries the "sacredness of life" means,--Protect the fly, no matter what happens to the baby.

One subject, upon which Dr. Devine has not touched in his list given above, is the necessity for the protection of well children from contagious diseases, and of skilful, tender care of the sick. We might easily fill a chapter with the study of so-called "medical practice" as conducted in non-Christian lands,--a practice composed largely of mingled superstition, ignorance, cruelty, and avarice--but a few pages on the subject in addition to our earlier study of what takes place at the time of childbirth will suffice, we trust, to make earnest Christian women desire to study it further. It is easy to shrink from contemplating the sufferings of innocent children, and many a woman is tempted to say, "I am too sensitive, I cannot hear about such things." But are we more sensitive than the little, shrinking, pitiful children to whom these things happen daily? Therefore, not to encourage morbid curiosity, but in order that as Christian mothers and sisters we may lift the burden from little shoulders unable to bear it, let us fearlessly face the facts as they are.

On an itinerating journey in Korea Dr. and Mrs. Underwood with their little boy stopped at a village called Pak Chun and had a rather disturbing experience.

Just before leaving, I saw a child quite naked, covered with smallpox pustules in full bloom, standing near our door. I asked one of the natives if there was much of that disease in the village at present. "In every house," was the concise reply. "Why, there is none in the house we are in," said I with confidence. "Oh, no, they took the child out the day you came in order to give you the room," was the reassuring answer. We had eaten and slept in that infected little room, our blankets all spread out there, our trunks opened, everything we had exposed. We had even used their cooking utensils and spoons and bowls before our own packs had arrived. For ourselves we had been often exposed, and believed ourselves immune. Mr. Underwood had nursed a case of the most malignant type, and I had been in contact with it among my patients,--but our child! So we sent a swift messenger with a despatch to the nearest telegraph station, twenty-four hours away, to Dr. Wells, in Pyeng Yang. He at once put a tube of virus into the hands of a speedy runner, who arrived with it a week later.

We found the country full of smallpox, measles, and whooping-cough, and added to our smallpox experience an exactly similar one with measles.

The loud death wail goes up from a village home in Persia where a little life has been snatched away by diphtheria. Instantly every mother in the village seizes her baby and the next-to-the-youngest toddles after, and all gather in the family room of the little mud home, where the body lies, and show their sympathy by adding their voices to the general din. Fortunately custom decrees that burial take place as speedily as possible, but the mischief has already been done, and echoes of the death wail are heard from far and near.

Call over the roll of physicians of your own Board. A wonderful report it would be if each could respond and give the number of epidemics through which he or she has worked unflinchingly, bringing hope and comfort and life to hundreds and thousands stricken down not only by the diseases already mentioned but by typhus, cholera, and plague. Call the roll of the countries where no law demands isolation or precautions of any kind, and one after another would respond, if it could, in terms of loving gratitude to missionaries who have introduced or freely used vaccine, anti-toxin, cholera serum, and other products of medical science. Many lands are now awaking to the possibility and desirability of using preventive measures, and vaccination, for instance, is very prevalent in China. It is good to hear Dr. Estella Perkins of China say, after an epidemic of scarlet fever, "I must say, however, that these young mothers have been very obedient to orders. I know by the number of dispensary cases of sequelae in patients I did not treat, that the careful following of directions by the mothers of my children must have saved half of them from bad results of the disease. It is a comfort to be able to do something more than prescribe a little medicine."

We spoke above of the ignorance, cruelty, superstition, and avarice that compose so largely the medical practice of the Orient. Disease is very frequently considered the work of an evil spirit which must either be appeased by offerings or driven out by harsh and cruel treatment. And so the tender little bodies are branded with hot irons, pierced by needles, or burned with rags dipped in oil and set on fire. While the little one suffers, a witch doctor may be called in to use his incantations, or the mother may take a little rag from some article of the child's clothing and tie it to a sacred tree already covered with hundreds of these rags, or the string of beads or the entrails of a beast are consulted to see if the omen is favorable for administering medicine. Let me give just one case from Central Africa which can be duplicated many times over from the records of other lands.

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