Ladies who make up their minds to face the hot weather do well to strive to compass a certain amount of exercise in the open air, for their occupations tend to keep them in the house more than their worse halves. It is a great mistake to picture the Anglo-Indian lady as passing her time in sloth and idleness. Civilisation has not reached the same pitch in the Tropics that it has in temperate climates, and those who migrate there must be prepared to live two centuries behind Europe; with the result that a multitude of the details of household economy have to be done in the house which, at home, would be managed by the tradesman. On this account, the memsahib finds herself back in the days of domestic dairies and still rooms, and must busy herself with the superintending of a score of details undreamt of in a modern English housewife’s philosophy. To realise how much she has to do and how well she does it, one has only to put up for a few days in a bachelor’s ménage, and reflect how much better the “singly blessed” fare west of Suez.
Whether ladies really suffer more from the strain of hot climates than persons of the male persuasion, is very difficult to say, as it is probably mainly the more robust who elect to share the burden and heat of the day in the plains with the mere man; but it is probably more a question of will power than of physical strength that determines the question; for as often as not it is the big Du Maurier type of girl that leads the rout to the hills, while some fragile-looking piece of bottled energy remains to be the life of the parching station below. Those who do stay, as a rule, do not appear to suffer any more than their husbands; but no one is any the better for a hot weather in the plains, and whether the strain of such surroundings is well or ill borne, is probably more a question of individual temperament than of either sex or physical strength.
The writer has met with ladies who had passed many consecutive years in the plains of India with apparently no very noticeable bad effects, but these have been mainly such as, owing either to inclination or the nature of their occupation, were a good deal out and about, in spite of the heat, and so got a fair amount of exercise, and did not shut themselves up for all the daylight hours in stifling and depressing semi-darkness.
CHAPTER V.
Hints on the Management of Children in Hot Climates.
Owing to the circumstance that it is more convenient to deal with the subject of the feeding of infants in connection with that of the prevention of infantile diarrhœa, but little of a nature special to hot climates remains to be noticed in connection with the management of young infants, for being concerned with little else than the assimilation of nourishment, their well-being or otherwise is governed almost entirely by the state of their digestion.
Putting aside the special danger of infantile diarrhœa, young infants generally do well in hot climates, which are in many ways suitable to their low powers of resistance to cold. Some writers, very competent to speak on the subject, are indeed of opinion that very young infants do better in India than in cold or temperate climates; and perhaps this may be the case as regards breast-fed children, for, the air temperature being but little below that of the body, they are almost entirely protected from the coughs and colds of all sorts that do so much damage at home, and lead to the poor children being confined to a stuffy atmosphere instead of enjoying the enormous advantage of unlimited fresh air, of which an infant requires proportionately even more than an adult. On this account never allow a nurse, however experienced she may be in her own conceit, to cover a child’s face with a handkerchief even out of doors, as the re-breathing of air already polluted by passing through the lungs is one of the most frequent causes of illness in human beings of all ages, and if the air outside be really so cold as to be harmful, the child will be better indoors, in a well-warmed and ventilated room, than outside, if half stifled in this silly fashion.
If she has any lingering doubts on the matter, let the mother borrow an ambulance, and try how much fresh air can be got, lying flat on the back, with a handkerchief spread over the face, and a fussy old woman in attendance to replace it should it chance to get disarranged.
The dangers of that abomination, the “baby’s comforter,” are elsewhere adverted to, but to show that the writer is by no means singular in his opinion, the following extract from Science Siftings may be read with advantage:—
“Most expert observers of the infectious nature of consumption have stated that the bacilli almost invariably enter the system through the nose or mouth, the respiratory system, in fact. Yet there are others who state that the milk drunk by infants is a chief cause of infection. But a new and deeply interesting theory is put forward by Drs. J. O. Symes and T. Fisher in the British Medical Journal. All day long, they write, babies are sucking an indiarubber comforter, and it no sooner drops on to the dirty floor than it is hastily picked up and thrust again into the mouth of the infant. Older children also, as they crawl, take up every article they can lay hold of and put it into their mouths, to the danger of which their dirt-begrimed cheeks bear witness. The moral is obvious.”