The Young Mother: Management of Children in Regard to Health

CHAPTER VIII.
DRINKS

Infants need little drink. Adults, even, generally drink to cool themselves. Simple water the best drink. Opinions of Dr. Oliver and Dr. Dewees. Animal food increases thirst. Only one real drink in the world. The true object of all drink. Tea, coffee, chocolate, beer, &c. Milk and water, molasses and water, &c. Cider, wine, and ardent spirits. Bad food and drink the most prolific sources of disease. Children naturally prefer water. Danger of hot drinks. Cold drinks. Mischief they produce. Caution to mothers. Extracts. Drinking cold water, while hot.

Children need little if any drink, so long as their food is nothing but milk; nor indeed for some time afterward, unless they are indulged in the use of animal food. Adults, even, very seldom drink merely to quench natural thirst. In the summer, people usually drink either to cool themselves, or to gratify a thirst which is wholly artificial. Tea, coffee, beer, cider, and most other common drinks, when not used for the sake of their coolness, are drank, both in winter and summer, for this purpose.

That this is the fact, we have the most abundant and unequivocal evidence. I know that much is said of the demand which a profuse perspiration creates among hard laborers in the summer. Such a sudden abstraction of a large amount of fluid requires, it is said, a proportional supply, or life would soon become extinct. Yet there are many old men who have perspired profusely at their labor all their days, and yet have drank nothing at all, except their tea, morning and evening; and perhaps have eaten, for one or two of their meals daily, in summer, a bowl of bread and milk. And some of them are among the most remarkable instances of longevity which the country affords.

How the system acquires a sufficient supply of moisture to keep up good health, in these cases, I do not pretend to determine: perhaps it is through the medium of the lungs. But at any rate, it can obtain it without our drinking for that sole purpose, to the great danger of exciting liver complaints, diarrhoea, dyspepsia, colds, rheumatisms, and fevers.

But if adults who perspire freely do not require much drink, children certainly do not; and above all, young children. And if they do require any thing, it is only simple water. The following remarks of Dr. Oliver, of Hanover, N.H., are extracted from Dr. Mussey's late Prize Essay on Ardent Spirits:

"Who has not observed the extreme satisfaction which children derive from quenching their thirst with pure water? And who that has perverted his appetite for drink, by stimulating his palate with bitter beer, sour cider, rum and water, and other beverages of human invention, but would be a gainer, even on the score of mere animal gratification, without any reference to health, if he could bring back his vitiated taste to the simple relish of nature?

"Children drink because they are dry. Grown people drink, whether dry or not, because they have discovered a way of making drink pleasant. Children drink water because this is a beverage of nature's own brewing, which she has made for the purpose of quenching a natural thirst. Grown people drink anything but water, because this fluid is intended to quench only a natural thirst; and natural thirst is a thing which they seldom feel."

There is a great deal of truth, as well as of sound philosophy, in these two paragraphs, and little less of truth in the following paragraph from Dr. Dewees:

"We have witnessed very often, with sorrow, parents giving to their young children wine, or other stimulating liquors. Nature never intended anything stronger than water to be the drink for children. This they enjoy greatly; and much advantage is occasionally experienced from its use, especially after they have commenced the use of animal food."

Two things are to be observed in the last remarks, which are, that children demand drink of any kind but seldom, and that even this occasional demand is often the special result of the use of animal food. Here comes out an important secret. It is the use of animal food, to a very great degree, in adults and children both, that creates so much of that unnatural thirst which prevails in the community. When we shall come to lay aside animal food, in childhood, youth, manhood and age, much that is now called thirst will be banished; and much of the intemperance and other kinds of sensuality which follow in its train.

It has been sometimes said that there is but one kind of drink in the world—and that is water. This is strictly, or rather physiologically true. For, though many mixtures are called drinks, it is only the water which they contain that answers any of the legitimate purposes for which drink was intended by the Creator.

The object of drink, besides quenching our thirst, or rather while it quenches it, is, not to be digested, like food, but to pass directly from the stomach into the blood-vessels, and dilute and temper the blood, rendering it more fit to answer the great purpose of sustaining life and health. Now, there is nothing that can do this but water. Alcohol cannot do it, nor can turpentine, oil, quicksilver, melted lead, or any other liquid.

Tea, coffee, chocolate, small beer, soda water, lemonade, &c., which are nearly all water, quench the thirst very well, it is true; but not quite so well as water alone would. The narcotic principle of the first two, the alcoholic principle of the fourth, and the mucilage, nutriment, acid, and alkali of the rest, are in the way; for thirst would be quenched still better without them, even when it is of an unnatural kind.

Indeed, the same or similar remarks may be made in regard to all other mixtures which are usually proposed as drinks. Even milk and water, molasses and water, &c., in favor of which so much is said, are objectionable, as mere drinks. Not that they contain anything poisonous, but they evidently contain nutriment; and even this, except as a part or the whole of a regular meal, does harm; for it sets the stomach at work when it needs repose. Mere drink, as I have already said, is never digested.

But if the drinks above mentioned, and even milk and water, are objectionable, what shall we say of cider, wine, and ardent spirits?—substances which contain, the latter one half, and the two former from one twentieth to one fourth alcohol. Surely, nobody will deny that these substances ought, at all events, to be banished from the nursery. And yet we occasionally find them there, not only for the use of the mother, to the ruin of the child, indirectly—but also, in some of their smoother forms, for the use of the child itself.

I would not lay too much stress on food and drink; for, as I have already observed, more than once, the causes of infantile ill health and mortality are numerous. Still I must insist that, of all the sources of disease, these are the most prolific. Much is done towards ruining the health of children by the improper food and drink of the mother. But when, in addition to all this, the children themselves are early fed with animal food, and with stimulating drinks—punch, coffee, tea, &c.—and an artificial thirst is early excited and rendered habitual, their destruction, for time and eternity, is almost inevitable.

Very few children relish any drink but water, or sweetened water, at first; and where they do, it is probably hereditary. I have been struck with their tastes and preferences; nor less with the folly of those around them, in endeavoring to change them, by requiring them—almost always against their will—to sip a little coffee, or a little tea, or a little lemonade; or, it may be, a little toddy. Such children may escape the death of the drunkard or the debauchee; but if they do, it will not be through the instrumentality of the parents.

I am very much opposed to giving children hot drinks of any kind. If they are to drink substances which are injurious, as tea or coffee, let them be cool. I do not say cold, for that would be going to the other extreme. But no drink, in any ordinary case, should be above the heat of our bodies; that is, about 98 degrees of Fahrenheit's thermometer. Yet the precautions of this paragraph will be almost unnecessary, if children are confined—as they ought to be, and would be, did we not go out of our way to teach them otherwise—to water, as their only drink. Cold water is almost always preferred. Not one child in a thousand would ever prefer it hot, until his taste had been perverted. No writer has inveighed more against hot drinks of every kind, than the late William Cobbett—and, as I think, with more justice.

But, in avoiding one rock, we must not, as has already been intimated, make shipwreck on another. Hot drinks, though they injure the powers of the stomach, and by that means and through that medium, are one principal cause of the almost universal early decay of teeth, are yet less injurious, or at least less dangerous, immediately, than cold ones. Mr. Locke, in speaking of the sports of a child, in the open air, has the following quaint, but judicious remarks:

"Playing in the open air has but this one danger in it, that I know; and that is, that when he is hot with running up and down, he should sit or lie down on the cold or moist earth. This, I grant, and drinking cold drink, when they are hot with labor or exercise, brings more people to the grave, or to the brink of it, by fevers and other diseases, than anything I know. These mischiefs are easily enough prevented when he is little, being then seldom out of sight. And if, during his childhood, he be constantly and rigorously kept from sitting on the ground, or drinking any cold liquor, while he is hot, the custom of forbearing, grown into habit, will help much to preserve him, when he is no longer under his maid's or tutor's eye.

 

"More fevers and surfeits are got by people's drinking when they are hot, than by any one thing I know. If he (the child) be very hot, he should by no means drink; at least a good piece of bread, first to be eaten, will gain time to warm his drink blood hot, which then he may drink safely. If he be very dry, it will go down so warmed, and quench his thirst better; and if he will not drink it so warmed, abstaining will not hurt him. Besides, this will teach him to forbear, which is a habit of the greatest use for health of mind and body too."

The last remarks are full of wisdom. Mothers may depend upon it, that every indulgence to which they accustom their children paves the way for habitual indulgence; and has a tendency to lead, indirectly, to indulgence in other matters; and, on the contrary, every self-denial which they can lead children to exercise, voluntarily—even in these every-day matters of food, drink, exercise, &c. is so much gained in the great work of self-denial and the resisting of temptation in matters of higher importance. But I must not moralize too long; having dwelt on this same point under the head Confectionary. I proceed, therefore, to make a few more extracts from Mr. Locke:

"Not being permitted to drink without eating, will prevent the custom of having the cup often at his nose; a dangerous beginning."

"Men often bring habitual hunger and thirst on themselves by custom."

"You may, if you please, bring any one to be thirsty every hour."

"I once lived in a house, where, to appease a froward child, they gave him drink as often as he cried, so that he was constantly bibbing. And though he could not speak, yet he drank more in twenty-four hours than I did."

"It is convenient, for health and sobriety, to drink no more than natural thirst requires; and he that eats not salt meats, nor drinks strong drink, will seldom thirst between meals."

Great mischief is often done to their health by children at school; and one instance of this is, in getting violently heated with exercise, and then pouring down large quantities of cold water to cool themselves. I once made it a habitual rule for pupils, that they must drink water, if they drank it at all, on leaving their seats to go to their plays, but not afterwards: and I was so situated that I could prevent the law from being broken, as there was no spring or well to which they could have access, privately. And though they thought the rule rather severe, I have no doubt it saved them from much injury, and perhaps sometimes from sickness.

CHAPTER IX.
GIVING MEDICINE

"Prevention" better than "cure." Nine in ten infantile diseases caused by errors in diet and drink. Signs of failing health. Causes of a bad breath. Flesh eaters. Gormandizers. General rule for preventing disease. When to call a physician.

So much error prevails in regard to the medical management of the young, that a volume might be written without exhausting the subject.¹⁴ My present limits and plan allow of only a few remarks, and those must be general.

That "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure," has so long ago become a proverb, that it seems almost idle to repeat the sentiment. And yet it is to be feared that very few receive it as a practical truth, in the management of children. Now nothing is more certain than that it is easier, as well as more humane, to prevent diseases than to cure them.

I have elsewhere mentioned the opinion of a very eminent physician, that nine in ten of children's diseases may be imputed to error with regard to the quantity or the quality of their food. For myself, I am by no means certain that nine out of ten is the exact proportion, though I think the number is, at all events, very large. Few children, or even grown persons, are seized with disease suddenly. Their progress towards it is always gradual, and sometimes imperceptible. To a physician of any tolerable degree of skill, however, there is no difficulty in observing and pointing out the first steps towards illness; in those whose habits of life are well known to him; and of foretelling the consequence.

But since parents and nurses are not so well qualified as physicians to make these observations, I will endeavor to point out a few certain signs and symptoms by which they may know a child's health to be declining, even before be appears to be sick.—For if these are neglected, the evil increases, goes on from bad to worse, and more violent and apparent complaints will follow, and perhaps end in incurable diseases, which a timely remedy, or a slight change in the diet and manner of life, would have infallibly prevented.

"The first tendency to disease," says Dr. Cadogan, "may be observed in a child's breath. It is not enough that the breath is not offensive; it should be sweet and fragrant, like a nosegay of fresh flowers, or a pail of new milk from a young cow that feeds upon the sweetest grass of the spring; and this as well at first waking in the morning, as all day long."¹⁵

There is much of truth in these remarks; but if they are wholly true, then very few children are perfectly healthy. For no child that eats much animal food of any sort, or, what amounts to nearly the same thing, much butter or gravy, will long retain the fragrant breath here alluded to. Who has not observed the difference in this respect, between animals in general which feed on flesh, and those which feed on grass? And whether it is the character of their respective food that makes the difference or not, it is also true that there is nearly as much difference of breath between men who use animal food and those who do not, as between other animals. The breath of some of our enormous meat eaters would almost remind one of a slaughter house.

Nor is it the quality of food alone, that will induce a foul breath, either in adults or infants. He who swallows such enormous quantities, even of plain food, as by overloading and fatiguing the stomach, tend gradually to debilitate it, will produce the same effect. The enormous feeders of this full feeding country, whether they are young or old, whether they inhabit the mountain or the vale, and whether they feed on animal food or not, have generally a bad breath; and if they seldom offend, it is because few feed otherwise. And it is not too much—in my own opinion—to say of this whole class of gormandizers, no less than of the flesh eaters, that they have laid for themselves the foundation of future disease.

One general rule may here be distinctly laid down. As a child's breath becomes hot and feverish, or strong, or acid, we may be certain that "digestion and surfeit have fouled and disturbed the blood; and now is the time to apply a proper remedy, and prevent a train of impending evils. Let the child be restrained in its food. Let it eat less, live upon milk or thin broth for a day or two, and be carried (or walk if it is able) a little more than usual in the open air."¹⁶

This rule is the more important, because, if duly persevered in, it will generally prevent disease, and save the trouble and evil consequences of taking medicine at all. Meanwhile it will be advisable to call in a physician—not to give drugs, but to prevent the necessity of giving them. There is a foolish fear abroad that physicians, if called before a person is violently sick, will dose him with their drugs, as a matter of course, till they make him sick. But this, no judicious physician will ever do. It may have been done, though I believe it has been seldom. The more general course is to defer calling for medical advice, till it is too late to use preventive means; and medicine is then resorted to by the physician as a sort of necessary evil.

A judicious physician, seasonably called in, would in many instances save a severe fit of sickness, besides a great deal of expense, both of time and money.

But if the first symptoms of approaching disease are overlooked—if the child is fed, or rather crammed; with solid food as much as ever—and if no medical advice is sought, his sleep will soon become disturbed; he will be talking, starting, and tumbling about, and will have frightful dreams; or he will at other times be found smiling and laughing. To these, in the end, may be added, loss of appetite, paleness, emaciation, weakness, cough, and consumption; or colics, worms, and convulsions.

I do not undertake to say that the most judicious parental management, aided by the greatest medical skill, will always prevent disease; far from it. The child may and undoubtedly sometimes does inherit a tendency to a particular disease; or he may be made sick by error in regard to dress, exercise, &c. But so long as nine tenths of the disease and early mortality of the young might be prevented by due attention to all these means combined, so long will it be necessary to reiterate the sentiments of the present section.

CHAPTER X.
EXERCISE

SEC. 1. Objections to the use of cradles.—SEC. 2. Carrying in the arms—its uses and abuses.—SEC. 3. Creeping—why useful—to be encouraged.—SEC. 4. Walking—general directions about it.—SEC. 5. Riding abroad in carriages.—SEC. 6. Riding on horseback—objections. Riding schools.

This subject may be considered under the following heads: ROCKING IN THE CRADLE; CARRYING IN THE ARMS; CREEPING; WALKING; RIDING IN A CARRIAGE; AND RIDING ON HORSEBACK. These I shall consider in their order.

SEC. 1. Rocking in the Cradle

There are two opinions in regard to the use of the cradle in the nursery. Some condemn it altogether; others think its occasional use highly proper. Those who condemn it, do it chiefly on the ground that it produces a whirling motion of the brain, which, while it inclines to giddiness and lulls to sleep, disturbs, in some degree, the process of digestion.

It seems to me that there is weight to this objection; and although the cradle has been extensively used without producing any obviously evil effects, I should greatly prefer to have it universally laid aside. As far as mere amusement is demanded, it is quite unnecessary, since there are so many amusements which are far better. As a means of inducing sleep, I am still more strongly opposed to it; for if a child be rationally treated in every other respect, it will never need artificial means to induce it to sleep. Nature will then be the most appropriate directress in this matter.

If there is a cradle in a nursery, it is almost always full of clothes loaded with air more or less impure, and the child is buried in it more than is compatible with health, even in the judgment of the mother or the nurse; for so convenient is its use, and so great the temptation to keep the child in it, that he will often be found soaking there a large proportion of his time. Every one knows that the air has not so free access to a child in the cradle as elsewhere, especially if it have a kind of covering or hood to it, as we often see. Besides, the cradle is a piece of furniture which takes up a great deal of space in the nursery; and every one who has made the trial effectually, will, it seems to me, greatly prefer its room to its company.

If any cradle is to be used, those are best which are suspended by cords, and are swung, rather than rocked. And this swinging should be in a line with the body of the child as much as possible; as this motion is less likely to produce injury than its opposite.

SEC. 2. Carrying in the Arms

This is the most appropriate exercise for the first two months of existence; and indeed, one of the best for some time afterward.

Although a healthy, thriving child ought to sleep, for some time after birth, from two thirds to three fourths of his time, yet it should never be forgotten that the demand for proper exercise during the rest of the time, is not the less imperious on this account; but probably the more so.

I have already mentioned the importance of bathing, which is one form of exercise, and of gentle motion in the arms, immediately afterward. The same gentle motion should be often repeated during the day; care being taken to hold the child in such a position as will be easy to him, and favorable to the free exercise of all his limbs and muscles.

There are many mothers and nurses, who not only rejoice that the infant inclines to sleep a great deal, since it gives them more liberty, but who take pains to prolong these hours beyond what nature requires, by artificial means. I refer not only to the use of the cradle, but to means still more artificial—the use of cordials and opiates, to which I have already adverted. But whatever the means used may be, they defeat the purposes of nature, and are in the highest degree reprehensible. Nothing but the most chilling poverty should prevent the mother from having the child—for a few weeks of its first existence at least—in her own arms, nearly all the time which is not absolutely demanded for repose. She should even invite it to wakefulness, rather than encourage sleep.

Attention to exercise ought to be commenced before the child is more than ten days old. For this purpose he should be placed on his back, on a pillow, in order that the body may rest at as many points as possible. In this position he has the opportunity to move his limbs with the most perfect freedom, and to exercise his numerous muscles. There is nothing more important to the infant—not even sleep itself—than the action of all his muscles; and nothing contributes more to his rapid growth.

At first, the body should be kept, while on the arm, in nearly a horizontal position, with the head perhaps a very little elevated; but after a few weeks, it will be proper to change the position for a small part of the time; placing the body so that it may form an angle of a few degrees with the horizon. When this is done, however, it should always be by placing the hand against the shoulders and head, in such a manner as to support well the back; for it is extremely injurious to suffer the feeble spine to sustain, at this early period, any considerable weight.

Still more erroneous is the practice of some careless nurses, of carrying the child quite upright a part of the time, almost without any support at all. There can be no doubt that the spinal column of many a child is injured for life in this way. There can be no apology for such things.

But it is not sufficient to denounce, merely, the custom of holding the infant's body in an erect position. Every inquiring mother—and it is for such, and no other, that I write—will naturally and properly ask the reason why.

The child is not born with all its bones solid. Some are mere cartilage for a considerable time. This is the case with the bones of the back. Now every person must see that the weight of the child's head and shoulders, resting for a considerable time on the slender cartilaginous spinal column, may easily bend it. And a curvature, thus given, may, and often does, deform children for life.

Dr. Dewees mentions a nurse who, from a foolish fondness for displaying them, made the children consigned to her charge sit perfectly upright before they were a month old. It is truly ludicrous, he says, to see the little creatures sitting as straight as if they were stiffened by a back board. It is truly horrible, I should say, rather than ludicrous. Crooked spines must be the inevitable consequence, if nothing worse.

The practice of bracing children, as it is called, by straps, back boards, corsets, &c., where it has produced any effect at all, has always had a tendency to crook the spine. This may be seen first, by observing one shoulder to be lower than the other, and next by a projection of the part of the shoulder blades next to the spine. Whenever these changes begin to appear, it is time to send for a physician, though it may often be too late to effect a cure. But on the general subject of bracing and corseting, I have treated at sufficient length elsewhere.

There is another error committed in carrying children in the arms. The head of the infant is often permitted either to hang constantly on one side, or to roll about loosely; as if it hardly belonged to the body. In the former case there is danger of producing a habit of holding the head upon one side, which it will be very difficult to overcome; in the latter, the spinal marrow itself may be injured—which would produce alarming and perhaps fatal consequences.

But all these evils, as has already been said, may be prevented, if the hand is placed so as to support the head and shoulders. Let not the mother, however, who reads this work, trust the matter wholly to a nurse; she must see to it herself; else she incurs a most fearful responsibility. The suggestions I have made are the more important in the case of children either very fleshy or very feeble, and of those disposed to rickets or scrofula; but they are important to all.

I have said that the motion of the child, on the arm, should be gentle. Many are in the habit of tossing infants about. There can be no objection to a slight and slow movement up and down, for a minute or so at a time; indeed, it is rather to be recommended, as likely to give strength and vigor no less than pleasure to the child. But when such movements are carried to excess, so as to frighten the child, they are highly reprehensible. The shock thus produced to the nervous system has sometimes been so great as to produce sudden death. Nor is it safe to run, jump, or descend stairs hastily or violently, with a child in our arms; and for similar reasons.

Infants should not be carried always on the same arm, for there is danger of contracting a habit of leaning to one side, and thus of becoming crooked. On this account, the arm on which they rest should be often changed. Nor should they be grasped too firmly. A skilful mother will hold a child quite loosely, with the most perfect safety; while an inexperienced one will grasp him so hard as to expose the soft bones to be bent out of their place, and yet be quite as liable to let him fall as she who handles him with more ease and freedom.

SEC. 3. Creeping

"Mankind must creep before they can walk," is an old adage often used to remind us of that patient application which is so indispensable to secure any highly important or valuable end. But it is as true literally, as it is figuratively. The act of creeping exercises in a remarkable degree nearly all the muscles of the body; and this, too, without much fatigue.

Some mothers there indeed are, who think it a happy circumstance if a child can be taught to walk without this intermediate step. But such mothers must have strange ideas of the animal economy. They must never have thought of the pleasure which creeping affords the mind, or of the vigor it imparts to the body.

Children are wonderfully pleased with their own voluntary efforts. What they can do themselves, yields them ten-fold greater pleasure than if done by the mother or the nurse. Yet the latter are exceedingly prone to forget or overlook all this—and to say, at least practically, that the only proper efforts are those to which themselves give direction.

They are moreover exceedingly fond of display. Some mothers seem to act—in all they do with and for children—as if all the latter were good for, was display and amusement. They feed them, indeed, and strive to prolong their existence; but it appears to be for similar reasons to those which would lead them to take kind care of a pet lamb.

It is on this account that they dress them out in the manner they do, strive to make them sit up straight, and prohibit their creeping. It is on this account too, as much perhaps as any other, that go-carts and leading strings are put in such early requisition. The contrary would be far the safer extreme; and the parent who keeps his child scrambling about upon the back as long as possible, and when he cannot prevent longer an inversion of this position, retains him at creeping as long as is in his power, is as much wiser, in comparison with him who urges him forward to make a prodigy of him, as he is who, instead of making his child a prodigy in mind or morals at premature age, holds him back, and endeavors to have his mental and moral nature developed no faster than his physical frame.