The Health bulletin [serial] - University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

I
AuQust, 1927 The Health Bulletin 17
child that cannot be left somewhere
in quiet, such person ought to feel
the necessity of taking up the child
and carrying it or be content with
arriving at the destination a few
minutes later in order to let the child
walk along in comfort and safety to
itself.
Such habits are even worse and
more cruel than the old-time practice
of some people of getting in a buggy
or on horseback and racing their
dogs until the latter were exhausted.
The dog was in much better position,
however, because it could stop any
time it wanted to and lie down and
the master was obliged to come back
and get it or wait for it. And even
where the dog did not have sense
enough to do that it did have full
play of all its muscles and was not
dangled from the hand of some adult
and jostled through a crowded street
in a position where breathing is almost
impossible.
We would like to urge that our
readers try this experiment out, or
at least to a sufficient extent to observe
the habit prevailing in their
particular vicinity, and to call public
attention to it in order to at least
reduce the pi-evalence to a minimum
on behalf of the helpless little ones.
TEA AND COFFEE BAD FOR CHILDREN
Sometime ago while taking a meal
at a well-known cafeteria in a large
town in North Carolina we noticed
at an adjoining table a man and a
woman with two fairly well-dressed
young children—a boy of about 5
and a girl of possibly 7. The adults,
evidently the parents of the children,
had the appearance of average intelligence.
They were sufficiently sunburned
to indicate more or less an
outdoor life. What attracted our attention
to the group was, first, the
rucus the two young ones were raising
on account of not being supplied
with something they wanted with
their meal. The other condition was
the apparent pallor which was evident
even beneath the sunburn, and
also the extreme whiteness of the
eyes and the pale bloodless lips of
the children. They kept up their
commotion and the parents evidently
yielded to their insistence in order
to avoid the increasing attention
given them from the other diners
about in the room, by calling a waiter,
who, after a whispered conversation,
went to the serving shelf and returned
with two steaming cups of
hot coffee. They refused to have any
milk in the coffee, but with plenty
of sugar seemed perfectly happy and
content. They drank their coffee to
the dregs with apparently as much
relish as any old toper ever did his
bottle of handout.
Whether or not the children had
hookworm, malarial infection, or
other troubles, there is no way of
knowing. Whether or not their appetite
for the stimulant in the coffee
was a result of disease we do not
know. Whether or not the consumption
of coffee regularly was producing
the untoward symptoms we do
not know; but we strongly suspect
that to be the case.
It cannot be written too many
times or repeated too often that tea
and coffee (and this includes also the
abominable iced tea) is bad for young
children. The active principle in tea
and coffee is an alkaloid known as
caffeine. One cup of hot steaming
coffee may contain as much as two
or three grains of this alkaloid. The
ordinary dose given by doctors, in
combination generally with other
drugs, is somewhere between a minimum
of one-quarter grain and the
maximum of one grain for adults. In
addition to the damage done to children's
nervous system, to their digestive
system, to their blood system, and
to other tissues in their body by the
excessive stimulation of caffeine consumed
in coffee or tea, both coffee