What a Young Wife Ought to Know

by Emma F. Angell Drake

The question of the weakness of our children’s eyes, has become a serious one. What is the cause and what the remedy? But a few words on the subject will suffice in a work like this. There are doubtless various causes, but among the most noticeable and most easily corrected are the following.

Improperly lighted schoolrooms, the windows being at the side and sometimes a part of them at the front. The white walls, the reflected light from which is very trying to the eyes. The constant use of the eyes for near work, which school life demands, and after the five hours in school, the two, three and sometimes four or five hours work out of school, a part of which must be done by artificial light, and that often poor.

The almost constant adjustment of the eye for near vision, which there must be by the city dwellers, with the tall buildings shutting out the far-away look, which rests the eye, in allowing the muscles of accommodation to relax. The poor print of the cheaper class of books put upon the market. The inferior paper will not admit of a clear bold type, and there must be a constant effort of the eye to adjust itself to the conditions. Much can be done to avoid the dangers, by teaching the children to close the eyes and rest them for a moment or two, whenever they feel tired, or to look as far away as possible.

You have doubtless read of “the barefoot cures,” established in a few of our foreign cities, with one, I think, in our own land. The patients are required to go out in the dew-wet grass with bare feet, for a certain time every morning, and thus to draw strength and electricity from mother earth. Could I accomplish it I would establish a barefoot cure in every home in the land. Isn’t it really more than three-fourths pride, that forbids our letting our little ones pull off their shoes and stockings, and revel for a time at least each day in the delicious freedom and coolness they could get from direct contact with mother earth?

Have any of you a child who has not teased to go barefooted, and why have you not allowed it? Do not, I pray you, cheat them out of this blissful freedom, and simple health-giving measure. Put your pride behind you. Venture the possibility that the foot may become a little larger, and let your boys and girls run barefooted for at least an hour or two each day, in the back yard, if you do not like their appearance in front, or in the park, if you have no back yards, and I venture to say you will have healthier, happier, heartier children than you have ever known. No matter how delicate they are, the more delicate the greater the need. By judicious management at the beginning, accustoming them to the change gradually and in the middle of the day, they will rarely take cold. After they have become habituated to it, you will also find that their usual colds will disappear.

Put the tiny babies out into the sand pile as soon as they can sit alone, take off their moccasins and stockings, and let their little feet come in contact with the warm sand and watch their delight.

And now I come to a common practice, which although thoughtlessly acquired is none the less pernicious, namely, the habit which many mothers have of dosing their children on all sorts of domestic nostrums, simply on the reputation that they are good for the ailments of childhood, with no idea of their fitness for the individual case, or for any case. The older I grow, and the more I learn about medicines, the more convinced I am that they are not to be tampered with. Could the composition of many of the so-called domestic remedies be known, mothers would stand appalled at their temerity in daring to administer them. We cannot measure the evil results of this indiscriminate dosing. Why are so many of these compounds put upon the market? Simply because people stand ready and willing to use them, and in doing so fancy they are sparing themselves a larger expense by way of a doctor’s fee.

You would hardly need to go into our uneducated homes to find results of antikamnia (self-ministered) antipyrine, ananalgia, or some other of the long list of anti’s or their near relatives, the various headache powders, anti-constipation teas, pills, etc., etc., without end. This habit among women, together with the tobacco habit among men has wrecked many a little lifeboat before it weighed anchor, and many an older craft has gone to pieces on the rocks because of them.

And now a last word on another bit of seed-sowing that brings forth more than an hundredfold in harvest. Mothers, do you dream what you may be doing when you use brandy and wine in your cookery, or the beer that makes your welsh rarebit “so much better,” to use a quotation from one who uses it. Is it safe in these days of intemperance to create the taste for alcoholics in your children that in after years may demand the gratification which drags them down to death, and carries with them many others? Could we know the effects upon a transient guest often, we would wonder, how, for the sake of custom we had allowed ourselves to play with the poison that destroys all that is beautiful in many homes, and sends to death yearly a countless throng, that some of our children may help to swell, if we do not do our utmost to stay it.