Volume 2

Hygèeia : or essays moral and medical on the causes affecting the personal state of our middling and affluent classes / by Thomas Beddoes.

Date:
1802-03
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Hygèeia : or essays moral and medical on the causes affecting the personal state of our middling and affluent classes / by Thomas Beddoes. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    most violent inflammations of the eye, and other complaints, produced by a breach in the window, or a by fissure in the wall, opposite the spot where the infant was usually held. In some instances, indeed, the parents, inatten- tive as the poor usually are, have made the discovery themselves. The same thing has occurred in opulent families. The shrinking of the sash-frame, of a board in the floor, or of some other wood-work has admitted an unperceived, but strong- current of cold air, by which infants have been seriously injured. But it is not only necessary to guard against such mishaps. The fire-place should be so contrived, that even in cold weather a steady temperature of about sixty degrees may be kept up, for the first four or five weeks after birth. The air of the nursery should never be suffered to be below fifty degrees. And I would advise every parent to ascertain this by a thermometer, con- stantly kept in the room, at the risque of being thought ridiculously minute. No hot-house is suffered to be without an in- strument of this kind. New-born babes come from as warm a climate as any exotic plant. They are as tender. And who will say they are not intitled to as scrupulous care? The directions, with which Count