Page:The physical training of children (IA 39002011126464.med.yale.edu).pdf/15



Nothing is more to be regretted than the fact that the females of this country grow up to womanhood in entire ignorance of all that relates to their future condition as parents, and the physical and mental development of the young for whose welfare they may yet be so deeply responsible. "It is not to be wondered at that when the young wife finds herself a mother, she is kept in a state of painful alarm and apprehension by the most trifling occurrence, or allows real danger to steal on in a state of the most fatal, because unguarded, security." The alarming mortality of childhood, amounting to nearly half the children born, before the age of five years is reached, leads us to inquire whether it is an unavoidable fatality of our race, and therefore must be patiently submitted to, or is to a great extent the result of ignorance on the part of those to whom the care of the infant man is intrusted?

The perfection of the human frame, and its admirable adaptation to external nature, together with the fact that the preservation or destruction of life in infancy bears a marked and direct relation to the nature of the treatment to which the young being is subjected, solves the question beyond the possibility of a doubt.