Evening Star Newspaper, April 27, 1930, Page 97

THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, APRIL 27, 1930, 17 ALL MEN MAY SOON BE GIANTS Interesting, New Feeding Experiments by the Carnegic Institution Stir Speculation in Possibility That a Child May Attain a Stature of Ten and a Half Feet at the End of Fifth Year and Con- tinue to Grow to an Even More “There is a limit on the size desirable for babies.” BY RENE BACHE. IGHT not babies be grown much more rapidly, attaining by the first year twice the ordinary size? And, by this means, could not their eventual stature and physi- cal development as adults be greatly increased? Recent experiments by the Carnegie institu- tion seem to indicate that the production of such giant babies might be pfacticable. The experiments in question have been made on mouse babies, which are easy to get in un- limited numbers and in six weeks reach adult age. With so rapid a growth process, observa- tions can be conducted to great advantage. In a general way, y, whatever is true of & mouse baby is true of a human baby. 3 At a recent exhibition in Washington the Carnegie Institution showed a series of mouse babies, alive, in illuminated glassed wall panels. In the first panel box was a tiny naked mouse- ling born that same morning; in the second a mouse 1 day old; in the third a mouse 2 days old, and so on up to 14 days. Alongside of the last box was another glass- fronted box containing a mouse twice the size of the oldest of the above-mentioned series. Yet, as explained by a label card, it was of exactly the same age, 14 days. Why? Because from birth onward it had been supplied with unlimited milk, whereas the other 14-day mouse got from its mother only a normal supply. In a word, the giant mouse baby owed its extraordinary size to the circumstance that it bad got all the food it was able to consume. The unlimited milk was furnished by the simple expedient of destroying 9 of a litter of 10 mouse babies, so that the remaining one got all there was. AN inference drawn is that if it were practi- cable to furnish a human baby with un- limited food of exactly the kind intended for it by nature, it might during its first year grow twice as fast as the ordinary baby, and at the age of 12 months be twice as big. For the human baby the supply of natural food has an obvious limitation. Bottle milk is not the natural food of the human infant. The patented baby foods are mere substitutes. Consider, however, the case of a rich man who might want his baby to be a giant. Ex- pense being of no importance, he might, through the hospitals, obtain for his child the services of a half a dozen or more healthy young women who had lost their own bables, whereby he would obtain for his child an unlimited supply of natural food. May it not be assumed that the child at the age of 12 months would be very much bigger and heavier than any year-old baby normally fed? The experiments with mouse babies certainly point to that inference. Other experiments have proved that if the growth of an' animal during early stages of its development can be accelerated, its size at maturity will be greater. Thus it might reasonably be expected that the giant baby would, as an adult, attain a superior stature. The average baby 14 days old is 19 inches long. By the end of its first year of life it is 28 inches long.” If it went on growing at this rate, the child at 3 years of age would be as tall as an average man. By the end of his fifth year he would attain a stature of 10% feet, and his tenth birthday would find him @ vertable Colossus 68 feet high. During the first 22 weeks of life the average baby doubles its weight. If it continued to grow at this rate, long before its fourth birth- day the child would weigh 2 tons. Obviously there 1s a limit on the size desirable for bablies. For every kind of animal, however, nature Enormous Height. According to figures furnished by the United States Children’s Bureau, a mother’s first baby is nearly always less in weight than later babies. Each subsequent baby is heavier at birth than the preceding one, and, in the average instance, the fifth weighs about 9 ounces more than the first one did. The Children’s Bureau favors 7-pound and 8-pound babies, but Dr. Ales Hrdlicka, physical anthropologist of the Smithsonian Institution, says that the 12-pound baby has a better start in life. “It is the healthy and well fed mothers that have the big babies,” he says. ‘“Hence, in the ordinary instance, the 12-pound baby starts with an exceptionally good physical equipment, With that advantage and with an inheritance of health, it is more resistant to disease. Its prospect of survival is better. “Nothing can better illustrate the importance of feeding, in relation to growth, than the in- ferior physique of slum dwellers. Slum-born babies, at birth, are smaller than the off-spring of well-to-do people for the simple reason that their mothers are not adequately nourished. Children of the slums at all ages are smaller than the children of more desirable residential quarters in cities, because they get less food, and what they do get is not the right kind. “For the same reason, when they become adults, they are noticeably dwarfed in stature. The men are three of four inches shorter than those of the well-to-do class. The rat-faced slum-born gangsters of our cities are under- A famous fat-boy of the movies standing beside a human tower. sized. When they appear in newspaper photo- grahs that fact strikes the eye. 6 is more and worse poverty in Europe than in America. In London, Liverpool, Dublin and other large cities an observant stranger notes the little people of the poor quar- ters. A policeman, moving through the crowds, towers over their heads, a giant. “The bables of small sized peoples are, quite naturally, smaller than those of larger races. Thus Japanese babies are at birth much less in size and weight than American babies. Where pygmy races are concerned, such as the Akkas of the African forests, the Negritos of the Philipuines and the black dwarfs of the Anda- man Islands in the Bay of Bengal, the new- born babies are correspondingly tiny.” A rather curious piece of newly gained knowl- edge is that it is the skeleton of the child that does the growing, the muscular and other tissues merely following along, as it were. But is there any means positively known to science whereby the growth of a young child can bc ‘o hastened as to promote its expecta- tion attaining, as an adult, superior stature? Perhaps, yes. For it has recently been as- certained that in certain foods there is con- tained a substance which has a peculiarly marked effect in encouraging growth. Analysis has shown that it is an organic compound of phosphorus and from it is mainly derived the phosphorus which helps to nourish the brain, nerves and other tissues. This phosphorus en- ters importantly into the composition of the bones, going to make phosphate of lime. This “grow-stuff” is found in cereal and other seeds wherein it is stored by nature to accelerate the growth of plants. It is found wherever “baby food” is stored for the use of embryo plant or animal. Egg yolks contain an extraordinary percentage of it. For a long time past dog breeders have made a practice of feeding egg yolks in large quan- tities to St. Bernard puppies to make them grow fast and big. Pups thus reared markedly out- grow those fed on other foods and attain much greater size when full grown. They are brother and sister. TH‘E reason why was not understood untfl & scientist of Paris, Dr. Danilewsky, suc- ceeded in separating from egg yolks a substance which was finally demonstrated to be the growth-accelerating element. Puppies fed with regular doses of this sub- stance not only grew faster than pups of the same litters reared in the ordinary way, but were stronger and more lively. . They developed thicker and silkier hair and seemed to be more intelligent. . Dr. Danilewsky suggested that human infants or young children fed with plenty of egg yolks might perhaps show a greatly increased rate of growth and that, with persistence in this diet, they might get so favorably a start as to give them a prospect of greater stature as adults. Quite conceivably, such a diet, unless strictly limited, might not agree with them, but regular doses of the “grow-stuff” itself—the growthe accelerating element separated from egg yolks— might accomplish the same purpose. v Dr. Koch, of the University of Chicago, has made use of the “grow-stuff” in a series of experiments on guinea pigs, which for each trial were of the same litter and were raised on the same diet of carrots, corn and cabbage. Weighed every two days, it was found that the guinea pigs dosed with the substance grew 60 per cent faster than the others. Similar trials with young chickens gave like results. Dr. Danilewsky found that tadpoles dosed with the “grow-stuff” grew much faster and bigger, while frogs’ eggs placed in water cone taining only 1-1500th part of it gained in 54 days 200 per cent more weight than other eggs of the same bath in ordinary water. In other words, they grew three times as fast. Government chemists at Washington, trying to find out why the “grow-stuff” had such re- markable effects, came to the conclusion that it acted as a stimulant upon the blood, which was thereby caused to deposit more rapidly the materials that build the bones and other tissues, All the materials that go to make growth are originally in solution in the blood. If, while growth is still going on, their deposition can be hastened, the animal will grow faster. The United States Public Health Service, having made a profound study of the subject, says that the chances are eight to seven that the first child of the average mother will be a boy. Later on, the chances are even for both sexes. But very young parents and very efderly parents are decidedly more likely to have boy babies than girl babies. If there be a foure teenth child, it is almost certain to be a boy. Twins occur in one of every 90 births in America; triplets in one of every 7,910 irths; quadruplets in one of every 371,125 births. The tendency to produce twins is hereditary, usually in the family of the mother. In two= thirds of all cases they are of the same sex, Very often they are no more alike than consecue tive children, but where so-called ‘“identical® twins are concerned, they usually resemble each other so closely that it is not easy to tell them apart. Nor is this at all surprising, inasmuch a8 they are really one person in duplicate. EVER.Yhummbein(befinsexhteneeul single fertilized cell. In occasional ine stances it happens that the cell splits into two, each of them a nucleus of growth. As & result, there is a birth of twins, who, in effect, share a single identity. Mental, moral and physical attributes are common to both. :Ine variably they are of the same sex. Upon this strange phenomenon was based Alexandre Dumas’ wonderful and romantio story of “The Corsican Brothers,” whose syme pathy with each other is so acute that the killing of one of them is instantly made known, though at a great distance, to the other, whe goes in pursuit of the killer and slays him. Though not a certainty, it is surmised that so-called “coalesced” twins are probably of the “identical” type. The Siamese twins were & famous example. Such twins, their bodies ine completely separated, are born much more often than is commonly supposed, but usually they die in babyhood. Besides promoting greater growth in chile dren, proper diet greatly increases their ree sistance to disease and consequently strengthens the race. One of the most important advances which science predicts for the human is increased brain power. It is believed that man has the inherent grain capacity to think from 10 te 100 times faster than he does today. (Copyright, 19%0.)