Barring deformities and constitutional defects, the average baby is pliable in the hands of the mother. The preceding chapters have told how a mother can give her child a fair start by intelligent care and feeding. In this chapter we will go farther and show how the mother can guard against ugliness in looks and character. Mothers—and doctors—are waking up to the realization that preventive medicine is the crying need among babies. The day when babies were supposed to “outgrow” certain disfigurements or tendencies to disease or weakness is past. Most of us can look back to the barbarous practice of soothing a baby with paregoric and then trusting to nature to relieve the condition which made soothing necessary. We really seemed to think that a miracle would be worked while the baby slept! If a baby had any terrible deformity or acute disease we turned to a surgeon or physician, but we took long chances when the baby was merely good. We never stopped to figure that a good baby could be made a better baby by intelligent care, a better baby transformed into a well-nigh perfect baby. And yet parents owe to the children they bring into the world precisely this care. One of the most interesting features of the Better Babies Contests which I have visited has been the amazement of some mothers when they discovered that, with a little care and attention, they could work such wonders in their babies. As an example, in one city near New York, the physicians in charge of the examinations at a contest asked me if I would attend a meeting or “dress rehearsal” of the examination a few weeks before the contest. They wanted a demonstration of just how babies are examined by a scorecard. So all the arrangements were made, the physicians agreeing to have a real baby on hand for a “model,” to undergo the full examination. The baby was scored precisely as if a regular contest were under way, and was penalized 5 points for a rough skin and 15 points for an eruption. The mother protested vigorously. The doctors showed her a fine eruption over the abdomen and under the armpits. She declared that the child had always had the marks—they were a sort of birthmark. The doctors explained that such an eruption indicated overfeeding. Here was a bottle-fed baby getting too heavy fare. The mother admitted that she knew nothing about modifying the milk. The doctors told her how it should be done. The roughness of the skin was due to mosquito bites, numbers of them. The mother said that she couldn’t help that and neither could the baby. That was the fault of the mosquitoes! The doctors did not agree with her. They explained that a careful mother protected her child from the mosquitoes with a netting, that mosquitoes carried disease, that the itching sores made the baby nervous.