Advice to a Mother on the Management of Her Children

by Pye Henry Chavasse

277. How may a child be prevented from becoming rickety? or, if he be rickety, how ought he to be treated?

If a child be predisposed to be rickety, or if he be actually rickety, attend to the following rules:—

Let him live well, on good nourishing diet, such as on tender rump-steaks, cut very fine, and mixed with mashed potatoes, crumb of bread, and with the gravy of the meat. Let him have, as I have before advised, an abundance of good new milk—a quart or three pints during every twenty-four hours. Let him have milk in every form—as milk gruel, Du Barry's Arabica Revalenta made with milk, batter and rice puddings, suet puddings, bread and milk, etc.

To harden the bones, let lime water be added to the milk (a table-spoonful to each tea-cupful of milk.)

Let him have a good supply of fresh, pure, dry air. He must almost live in the open air—the country, if practicable, in preference to the town, and the coast in summer and autumn. Sea bathing and sea breezes are often, in these cases, of inestimable value.

He ought not, at an early age, to be allowed to bear his weight upon his legs. He must sleep on a horse-hair mattress, and not on a feather bed. He should use every morning cold baths in the summer and tepid baths in the winter, with bay salt (a handful) dissolved in the water.

Friction with the hand must, for half an hour at a time, every night and morning, be sedulously applied to the back and to the limbs. It is wonderful how much good in these cases friction does.

Strict attention ought to be paid to the rules of health as laid down in these Conversations. Whatever is conducive to the general health is preventive and curative of rickets.

Books, if he be old enough to read them, should be thrown aside; health, and health alone, must be the one grand object.

The best medicines in these cases are a combination of cod-liver oil and the wine of iron, given in the following manner:—Put a tea-spoonful of wine of iron into a wine-glass, half fill the glass with water, sweeten it with a lump or two of sugar, then let a tea-spoonful of cod-liver oil swim on the top; let the child drink it all down together, twice or three times a day. An hour after a meal is the best time to give the medicine, as both iron and cod-liver oil sit better on a full than on an empty stomach. The child in a short time will become fond of the above medicine, and will be sorry when it is discontinued.