The laws of health / by W.H. Corfield.

  • Corfield, W. H. (William Henry), 1843-1903
Date:
1896
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The laws of health / by W.H. Corfield. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    lightly in summer, but still covered, and they should not be allowed to go about with bare legs and arms and low-necked frocks, as is too commonly the case. The other great danger to infants arises from insuf- ficient or improper food. Milk contains all that is necessary for their sustenance. It is their natural food, and the only one that they are able to digest. It is only after some teeth have appeared at the age of seven or eight months that the increased activity of the salivary glands enables them to digest starchy foods. From improper feeding children get disorders of the digestive apparatus, vomiting, diarrhoea, &c., frequently accompanied by convulsions. They may also suffer from rickets—a terrible disease, in which the bones are too soft, and so readily become bent out of position—various malformations resulting which remain throughout life, and one of the worst of which is an alteration in the shape of the chest, resulting in an impeded respiration. The communicable fevers— small-pox, measles, scarlet fever (or scarlatina, which is the same thing), whooping cough, diphtheria, and chicken-pox, are especially diseases of infancy and childhood, and it is extremely important that infants and young children generally should be kept out of the way of these complaints. The most terrible of them is small-pox, the mortality from which, as will be shown in a succeeding chapter, may be almost entirely prevented by vaccination ; and it is consequently re- quired by law that every infant should be vaccinated within three months after its birth, unless the medical attendant certifies that there is some special reason to the contrary. The disturbance caused by vaccina-