Page:The physical training of children (IA 39002011126464.med.yale.edu).pdf/252

 what use is learning without health? In such a case as this you cannot have both.

258. If a child be round-shouldered, or if either of his shoulder-blades have "grown out," what had better be done?

Many children have either round-shoulders, or have their shoulder-blades grown out, or have their spines twisted, from growing too fast, from being allowed to slouch in their gait, and from not having sufficient nourishing food, such as meat and milk, to support them while the rapid growth of childhood is going on.

If your child be affected as above described, nourish him well on milk and on farinaceous food, and on meat once a day, but let milk be his staple diet; he ought, during the twenty-four hours, to take two or three pints of new milk. He should almost live in the open air, and must have plenty of play. If you can so contrive it, let him live in the country. When tired, let him lie, for half an hour, two or three times daily, flat on his back on the carpet. Let him rest at night on a horse-hair mattress, and not on a feather bed.

Let him have every morning, if it be summer, a thorough cold water ablution; if it be winter, let the water be made tepid. Let either two handfuls of table salt or a handful of bay salt be dissolved in the water. Let the salt and water stream well over his shoulders and down his back and loins. Let him be well dried with a moderately coarse towel, and then let his back be well rubbed, and his shoulders be thrown back—exercising them, much in the same manner as in skipping, for five or ten minutes at a time. Skipping, by-the-by, is of great use in these cases, whether the child be either a boy or a girl—using, of course, the rope backward, and not forward.

Let books be utterly discarded until his shoulders have become strong, and thus no longer round, and his shoul