the presence of the disease of anemia; indeed, every infection harms the organs concerned with the forming of blood.
The third cause of anemia results from insufficient nourishment; but it must not spring to the reader's mind that this type of anemia is confined to the poor who are not in easy enough circumstances to eat what is delicious and good, like the pampered and refined. The heart of the matter here is the kind of food, not its quantity. There are statistics proving that many children of the well-to-do are stricken with anemia, as a result of their excess in eating a limited kind of food and their neglect of the remaining necessary kinds, such as meat, vegetables, eggs, etc. Likewise, many children of the poor, despite the smallness of their parents' income, eat a simple, varied diet containing what the body needs of the substances necessary for the soundness of the individual's health.
Rarely does anemia occur as a result of the destruction of the red cells after their formation, owing to disease or poisoning; and if it does occur, it is treated with medicines and the necessary diet.
Whatever the causes of the disease may be, the child stricken with anemia must be examined at successive intervals until the Hemoglobin Count resumes its normal state.
There is no doubt that the prevention of a disease is easier than its treatment—so why neglect it until it takes firm hold of a person? Since the child is exposed to being stricken with anemia after an illness or after accidents in which bleeding occurs, why should he not be medically examined, if only to set the mind at rest? For disease, when it first preys upon the human creature, is weak, fearing to meet stiff resistance; but it quickly grows severe and masters him if it finds the road easy for that.
Wisdom requires that the blood test be made a compulsory part of every general medical examination; and if the least suspicion of it appears, then begin at once, Madam, to fight it. For the ringing cries sent out by the specialists
in the rearing of children, urging upon mothers the necessity of having their children examined even when they are free of illness, are nothing but clear proof that "a dirham of prevention is better than a qintar of cure."
Glory to You, my Lord, You who subdue Your servant by taking back the life You had deposited in him. We do not ask You to desist from this act of Yours—for there is no turning back Your decree—but for patience and consolation...
Death is a mystery that the cultured human mind is powerless to understand; can its meaning for the child, then, be anything more than that the eyes which used to see have lost their light, and that the tongue which used to flow with speech has been struck dumb?
Your child comes to you, Madam, and asks you, for instance: Where is my grandmother, who used to bring us toys and sweets? You must acquaint him with the truth of the matter by telling him that she has passed to a world other than our world, where we can no longer see her, but that we can feel her presence among us by keeping up the affection of her friends and by doing deeds she used to favor. And beware, Madam, of fabricating stories with no truth in them—such as saying, for instance, "Your grandmother is away from us for a time," and other such innocent inventions which sound science counsels us to discard.
There is also a mistaken notion that must be fought, and that is making your child feel that he is the cause of the departed one's death—as when you tell him, "Your grandmother died from all your annoying of her with your unsatisfactory behavior." If our ladies realized the great harm such phrases leave upon their children's souls, they would strike them from their personal lexicons.
And since your faculties, Madam, are not strong enough to bear grave misfortunes, sound science excuses your weeping in your child's presence in order to give vent to your pent-up feeling—for your pent-up feeling weakens your endurance under it and brings you close to "nerves." Nor let it slip from your mind that an exaggerated expression of grief—tearing at your hair, for example—makes your child imagine death as more dreadful than it really is. So try, by grace of the calm nature the Creator, exalted be He, has bestowed upon you, to lighten the weight of grief upon yourself. If the departed one, God rest her, was your mother, for instance, and died of an incurable disease that had seized her, then your comfort is that she has passed from torment, and from an illness beyond which there is no recovery, to an eternal rest. Compare this misfortune of yours with the misfortune of bereaved mothers, and of widows who are still in the age of roses, and of women grieving over their only daughters. Let it suffice you that your dear departed found on her day those who gave freely of their tears, sharing your grief with you—while there are so many young men who fall on the fields of war, of whom their mothers know nothing but the news of their death.
My God, make us accept Your decree with beautiful patience, and make every heart a consoler to the sorrowful.