Page:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (1906).djvu/429

Rh and cannot transmit good or evil intelligence to man, and God, the only Mind, does not produce pain in matter. The act of yielding one's thoughts to the undue contemplation of physical wants or conditions induces those very conditions. A single requirement, beyond what is necessary to meet the simplest needs of the babe is harmful. Mind regulates the condition of the stomach, bowels, and food, the temperature of children and of men, and matter does not. The wise or unwise views of parents and other persons on these subjects produce good or bad effects on the health of children.

The daily ablutions of an infant are no more natural nor necessary than would be the process of taking a fish

out of water every day and covering it with dirt in order to make it thrive more vigorously in its own element. “Cleanliness is next to godliness,” but washing should be only for the purpose of keeping the body clean, and this can be effected without scrubbing the is whole surface daily. Water is not the natural habitat of humanity. I insist on bodily cleanliness within and without. I am not patient with a speck of dirt; but in caring for an infant one need not wash his little body all over each day in order to keep it sweet as the new-blown flower.

Giving drugs to infants, noticing every symptom of flatulency, and constantly directing the mind to such

signs, — that mind being laden with illusions about disease, health-laws, and death, — these actions convey mental images to children's budding thoughts, and often stamp them there, making it probable at any time that such ills may be reproduced in the very ailments feared. A child may have worms, if you say so, or any other malady, timorously held in the beliefs