Page:The physical training of children (IA 39002011126464.med.yale.edu).pdf/383



the drinking of stimulating and intoxicating liquids. Children's parties are properly stigmatized as disgusting and demoralizing. Schools come up for consideration, and most valuable advice and warning are given for the treatment of girls sent to these institutions. Physical education should always precede mental, and be continued with it. In a question between health and books, the former should always carry the day. "Unfortunately, in this enlightened age, we," as the author justly remarks, "commence at the wrong end—we put the cart before the horse: we begin by cultivating the mind, and we leave the body to be taken care of afterward; the results are broken health, precocious, stunted and deformed youths, and premature decay." All that is said in this volume on the subject of education is pertinent, suggestive and instructive, not only to mothers, but to all whose line of duty lies in training the young for the proper discharge of their duties in after life. Were I attempting to give an analysis of the work of Dr. Chavasse, I would have spoken first of his instructions on the topics of diet and clothing, which are quite comprehensive and adapted to the successive periods of infancy and childhood on to adolescence. Water for drink, milk as the staple food, "the most nourishing, wholesome and digestible," ought to require no special recommendation did we not sometimes see the substitution by parents, intelligent in other respects, of beer and wine, and even diluted spirits, for beverage, and of highly seasoned dishes of meat, pastries, cakes, etc., for food. Of milk it is truly said that "the finest and the healthiest children are those who for the first four or five years of their lives are fed principally upon it." The use of light clothing with a view of hardening children is discountenanced, as it deserves to be, and the present fashion of dressing children meets the strongest censure, as being both adverse to health and furnishing early lessons of vanity. The clothing should be of such texture and material as to keep up the animal heat, and in a climate like ours, as indeed in all northern climates or those misnamed temperate, the vicissitudes of temperature in which are so great and frequent, woollen undergarments can rarely be dispensed with. To children, and invalids at all ages, they are indispensable. The dress, whatever may be the fashion, should be easy fitting, and this more particularly, as pointed out by the author, in the matter of shoes and boots, the undue tightness of which is an abomination only second to tight lacing of the chest and abdomen.

Dr. Chavasse in the earlier editions of his work had carefully restricted himself to the domain of hygiene, and he was mainly induced to enlarge his teaching by the advice of Sir Charles Locock, in years gone by accoucheur to the queen. Following out this advice, he now gives, as already intimated, the treatment of some of the more urgent and serious diseases of infants and of children, to be carried out when a medical man cannot instantly be procured and when delay might be death. To a consideration of these he adds that of various ailments and of accidents, and thus enables the mother, with the assistance of discreet adults of the house, to have prompt recourse to the best means of treating them. The concluding section of the volume contains good and available advice for the prevention of diseases, the insidious approach of which makes it very necessary to detect their real character, and to adopt the best means of arresting farther progress, as in the instances of consumption and scrofula in both sexes, and curvature of the spine, most common in females.

Where there is so much to commend in plan and execution of the work of Dr. Chavasse, I feel no inclination to hunt out minor defects, and can have no hesitation in proclaiming him to be one of our most successful co-laborers in the grand domain of hygiene, and particularly in his chosen