Care must be taken to keep the bowels regular, which may be effected in most cases by the milk of the mother alone. Most of the complaints in children arise from flatulence or wind; to remove which give common catnip or fennel seed tea, let them drink it freely, and let the mother regulate her diet.
When children complain of pain in the stomach and bowels, it may be necessary sometimes to give a moderate dose of vegetable physic; senna and manna is very good; after the operation of physic let the diet be attended to. Green fruit must be avoided, and whatever is hard of digestion. The feet should be often bathed in warm water, the bowels must be fomented with bitter herbs, and it is also necessary to give the child sufficient exercise in the open air.
Bathing should never be neglected, as it contributes much to health. Many complaints of the skin and the system are caused by the neglect of this practice. Filth collects on the surface, obstructs perspiration, which retains morbid humors, and which are thrown upon some of the internal organs and create irritation. Is it not owing to this that infants fret and cry so much? Daily bathe with tepid water; this is also good for galling, chafing, excoriations, &c.
Pure Air and Exercise.—This is very necessary; impure and confined air with the want of exercise, causes disease; and hence children in cities are more pale, feeble, and sickly than those who live in the country and breathe pure air and play in the dirt. Confining children at home, in low, confined, dirty houses, cellars, and in school-rooms, is pernicious; also crowding too many in sleeping-rooms. When children are confined in small apartments, the air not only becomes unwholesome, but the heat relaxes their solids, renders them delicate, and disposes them to colds and many other disorders. Nor is the custom of wrapping them too close in cradles less pernicious. One would think that nurses were afraid lest children should suffer by breathing free air, as many of them actually cover the child’s face while asleep, and others wrap a covering over the whole cradle, by which means the child is forced to breathe the same air over and over all the time it sleeps. Children, therefore, must have as much exercise and air as possible, and should be employed in something useful and interesting.
Again; “The premature exertion of intellect to which the mind is stimulated at our schools, by the constant emulation and vanity, far from strengthening, tends to impair the health and tone of the brain, and of all the organs depending on it; and hence we rarely perceive the genius of the school manifesting in future years any of the superiority which attracted attention in early life.”
BARRENNESS.
Sterility proceeds from either a temporary or permanent incapability of conceiving or retaining the embryo, till it acquires a form. The causes producing this incapability, may consist in some malformation or deficiency of the womb, or its appendages, which cannot always be discovered during life, or in merely a weakness in the action of the womb. This last is by far the most frequent cause, and it is occasioned by local weakness of the womb, or general affections of the whole system; and is marked usually by an obstruction, deficiency, or redundancy of the menstrual evacuation, or by the complaint termed female weakness.
It may be considered as highly probable, that the absence of the capacity to be impregnated, will sometimes depend upon the imperfect condition of either the uterus itself or of the ovaries. If the former, it may consist in some derangement of the secreting surface of this organ; for, though there may be a regular discharge of a colored fluid, and this so nearly resembling the perfect secretion as to deceive the senses, it may yet want an essential condition or quality, and thus entail barrenness—hence, all women are not fruitful who may have a regular catamenial discharge; though, as far as can be determined by appearances, this discharge is every way healthy, and at the same time, the ovaries free from fault.
If it depend upon an imperfection of the ovaria, it may not, perhaps, admit of relief. The diseases of the ovaria may consist, 1st, in their imperfect development; 2dly, in derangement of structure; 3dly, in a want of a healthy organization of the ova themselves. Now, either of these conditions of the ovaria may be so complete as to altogether destroy their influence upon the secreting surface of the uterus; the catamenial discharge may, therefore, continue, with all due regularity, and yet the woman may be barren; and, hence, this discharge cannot be considered, rigidly, as a constant sign of fertility.
Yet it may be safely admitted, as a general rule, that women who menstruate regularly without pain, or the expulsion of coagula, or false membrane, are fecund; and that the reverse of these conditions is almost sure to be attended with sterility. It may also be observed, that we cannot attach much consequence to the quantity evacuated; for the woman who may evacuate double the quantity of another, is not for this reason more certainly prolific. I have known a number of instances of repeated impregnations, where, as far as could be ascertained, not more than two ounces were habitually evacuated; and this not occupying more than a day and a half, or two days, for its elimination: while, on the contrary, I have known women who were barren, discharge three or four times this quantity; and the fluid bear all the sensible marks of a healthy secretion. From this it would appear, that mere regularity in returns, the elimination of a proper quantity of fluid, and this fluid apparently of a healthy character, do not always declare the woman to be fecund. Yet, when the woman has never menstruated, or when this discharge has altogether ceased, agreeably to the ordinary arrangement of nature, or from disease, she either never becomes impregnated, or ceases to become so, if she ever have been.