The health of children in the nursery and school / by William Squire.

  • Squire, William Stevens 1825-1899.
Date:
1887
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The health of children in the nursery and school / by William Squire. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

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    biscuit or some milk as soon as they get up, and before the ab- lutions begin ; it is much better to give them a general wash in warmed water, in which they could stand while being sponged over with cool or tepid water, than to chill them when their powers of reaction are at their lowest. The soap used should not be irritating from excess of alkali, or from impure and im- perfectly-combined ingredients. Babies most easily suffer from this, and also from want of care in the warmth of the water u.sed, or from harsh rubbing; they also suffer many things both from the kind of dress and the fashion of dressing them ; a broad band is so rolled on as to compress the abdomen, and comes up so high on the chest as to interfere both directly and indirectly with free breathing; then come complex, many-stringed instru- ments of torture, while thick folds of linen, flannel, or even macintosh, curiously involve the legs; over all comes an in- explicable length of garment that is actually doubled on to the child, so as to ensure every form of over-heating, pressure, and encumberment. After a month of this process, aided by hoods, flannels, shawls, and wraps of all kinds, a strange variation is adopted; the under bands and folds are left, but a short outer garment is provided, with curious holes cut in the stiffened edges, so as to make sure that it shall afford no protection to legs, arms, or neck, if it were, indeed, fashioned to cover or even to come at all close to them. To prevent the possibility of this, and thoroughly to expose the chest and arms a string or ribbon ties the edge of the degenerated or absorbed neck or shoulder-piece to what remains of a rudimentary or metamorphosed sleeve. It is interesting to know that this picturesque fragment of some past phase of dress development can be preserved without the sacrifice of effective covering by inserting a close sleeve, or putting beneath the frills a little knitted jacket; or one of soft texture can be made to go moderately high on to the neck, with a seam over the shoulder, to let it lie flat to the upper part of the chest, and a sleeve cut with a good angle for the elbow and a very short inside seam ; this bit of clothing, if of nice material and colour, has a pretty effect under the open-work embroidery, thus shown off to advantage without risking the exposure of half the child’s body. Effective protection of the other half, which it is most important to keep warm, presents greater difficulties. Much irritation is produced by keeping damp clothes close to the skin, and more when caustic soda has been used in washing and is left from careless rinsing and drying. All impervious wraps are to be avoided; there must be frequent changes of linen. An infant’s tender skin has to be kept dry ; it is soothed and pro- tected by the use of violet powder after being washed. The best toilet powders are, in some degree, antiseptic, and are constantly