Appropriate fitting out FOR babies.
On babyhood.
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Babes are identical susceptible of the opinions of coldness; a proper attentiveness, therefore, to a proper clothing of the body, is imperative to their enjoyment of health. Unfortunately, an opinion is prevalent in society, that the tender child has naturally a great power of generating heat and resisting cold; and from this popular fault has come up the most calamitous answers. This opinion has been much strengthened by the insidious manner in which cold operates on the frame, the injurious effects not being always manifest during or immediately after its application, so that but too often the fatal result is traced to a wrong source, or the baby sinks under the action of an unknown cause.
The power of generating heat in warm-blooded animals is at its lower limit at birth, and additions successively to big age; young beasts, instead of comprising heater than adults, are broadly a grade or two more frigid, and part with their heat more readily; facts which cannot be too generally known. They demo how absurd must be the folly of that system of “hardening” the constitution (to which reference has been before made), which brings on the parent to plunge the tender and finespun child into the cold bathe at all hardens of the year, and freely bring out it to the cold, cutting electric current* of an east wind wind, with the lightest clothing.
The precepts which ought to channelise a parent in clothing her infant are as follows:
The cloth and quantity of the apparel should be such to bear on a sufficient balance of affectionateness to the consistence, baffled consequently by the season of the year, and the delicacy or strength of the infant’s constitution. In effecting this, however, the parent must guard against the too common practice of enfolding the child in countless folds of affectionate clothing, and keeping it perpetually confined to very hot and close rooms; thus butting against the opposite extreme to that to which I have just touched: for cypher tends so a good deal to enfeeble the constitution, to induce disease, and render the skin highly susceptible to the impression of cold; and thus to produce those very ailments which it is the chief intention to guard against.
In their make they had better be so arranged as to put no restrictions to the free movements of all parts of the child’s body; and so loose and easy as to permit the insensible perspiration to have a free exit, instead of being confined to and absorbed by the clothes, and held in contact with the skin, till it gives rise to irritation.
In their caliber they should comprise so much as not to irritate the delicate skin of the child. In infancy, therefore, flannel is rather too rough, but is desirable as the child grows older, as it gives a gentle stimulus to the skin, and wields health.
In its construction the arrange ought be so half-witted as to accept of being apace put on, since appareling is irksome to the infant, causing it to cry, and exciting as much mental irritation as it is able of feeling. Pins should be wholly parted with, their use being hazardous through the negligence of nurses, and even through the ordinary movements of the infant itself.
The adorning must be changed daily. It is eminently conducive to good health that a complete change of dress should be made every day. If this is not done, washing will, in a dandy measure, fail in its object, especially in insuring freedom from skin diseases.
During childhood.
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The adorning of the child ought possess the same attributes as that of infancy. It had better afford due affectionateness, be of such materials as do not irritate the skin, and so made as to occasion no grotesque constriction.
In relation to due warmth, it mayhap well again to repeat, that too little dressing is frequently fertile of the most sudden attacks of active disease; and that children who are thus exposed with thin clothing in a climate so variable as ours are the frequent subjects of croup, and other grave affections of the air- passages and lungs. On the additional hand, it must not be forgotten, that also warm clothing is a source of disease, occasionally even of as is diseases which originate in exposure to cold, and a great deal renders the frame a lot susceptible of the impressions of cold, particularly of cold air taken into the lungs. Regulate the clothing, then, according to the season; resume the winter dress early; lay it aside late; for it’s in spring and autumn that the vicissitudes in our climate are greatest, and congestive and inflammatory complaints most common.
With reference to material (as was before observed), the skin will at this age bear flannel next to it; and it is now not only proper, but necessary. It may be put off with reward during the night, and cotton maybe deputized during the summer, the flannel being resumed early in the autumn. If from very great delicacy of constitution it proves too irritating to the skin, fine fleecy hosiery will in general be easily endured, and will greatly conduce to the preservation of health.
It is extremely important that the clothes of the boy should be so made that no restraints shall be put on the causes of the body or limbs, nor injurious pressure made on his waist or chest. All his brawns ought to have full liberty to act, as their free exercise promotes both their growth and activity, and thus insures the regularity and efficiency of the several functions to which this muscles is subservient.
As is remarks hold on equalize force to the coiffe of the girl; and merrily, during childhood, at least, no differentiation is made in this matter ‘tween the sexes. Not so, however, when the girl is about to emerge from this period of life; a organisation of dress is then adopted which has the most insidious essences upon her health, and the development of the body, the exercise of tight stays, which impede the free and full action of the respiratory organs, being only one of the many restrictions and injurious practices from which in latter years they are hence damned to suffer so severely.