Remember excoriations are generally owing to the want of water—to the want of an abundance of water. An infant who is every morning well soused and well swilled with water, seldom suffers either from excoriations or from any other of the numerous skin diseases. Cleanliness, then, is the grand preventive of, and the best remedy for, excoriations. Naaman the Syrian was ordered “to wash and be clean,” and he was healed, “and his flesh came again like unto the flesh of a little child, and he was clean.”[[137]] This was, of course, a miracle; but how often does water, without any special intervention, act miraculously both in preventing and in curing skin diseases!
An infant’s clothes, napkins especially, ought never to be washed with soda; the washing of napkins with soda is apt to produce excoriations and breakings-out. “As washerwomen often deny that they use soda, it can be easily detected by simply soaking a clean napkin in fresh water and then tasting the water; if it be brackish and salt, soda has been employed.”[[138]]
10. Who is the proper person to wash and dress the babe?
The monthly nurse, as long as she is in attendance; but afterward the mother, unless she should happen to have an experienced, sensible, thoughtful nurse, which, unfortunately, is seldom the case.[[139]]
11. What is the best kind of apron for a mother, or for a nurse to wear, while washing the infant?
Flannel—a good, thick, soft flannel, usually called bath-coating—apron, made long and full, and which of course ought to be well dried every time before it is used.
12. Perhaps you will kindly recapitulate, and give me further advice on the subject of the ablution of my babe?
Let him by all means, then, as soon as the navel-string has separated from the body, be bathed either in his tub, or in his bath, or in his large nursery-basin; for if he is to be strong and hearty, in the water every morning he must go. The water ought to be slightly warmer than new milk. It is dangerous for him to remain for a long period in his bath; this, of course, holds good in a tenfold degree if the child has either a cold, or a pain in his bowels. Take care that, immediately after he comes out of his tub, he is well dried with warm towels. It is well to let him have his bath the first thing in the morning, and before he has been put to the breast; let him be washed before he has his breakfast; it will refresh him and give him an appetite. Besides, he ought to have his morning ablution on an empty stomach, or it may interfere with digestion, and might produce sickness and pain. In putting him in his tub, let his head be the first part washed. We all know, that in bathing in the sea, how much better we can bear the water if we first wet our head; if we do not do so, we feel shivering and starved and miserable. Let there be no dawdling in the washing; let it be quickly over. When he is thoroughly dried with warm dry towels, let him be well rubbed with the warm hand of the mother or of the nurse. As I previously recommended, while drying him and while rubbing him, let him repose and kick and stretch either on the warm flannel apron, or else on a small blanket placed on the lap. One bathing in the tub, and that in the morning, is sufficient, and better than night and morning. During the day, as I before observed, he may, after the action either of his bowels or of his bladder, require several spongings of lukewarm water, for cleanliness is a grand incentive to health and comeliness.
Remember it is absolutely necessary to every child from his earliest babyhood to have a bath, to be immersed every morning of his life in the water. This advice, unless in cases of severe illness, admits of no exception. Water to the body—to the whole body—is a necessity of life, of health, and of happiness; it wards off disease, it braces the nerves, it hardens the frame, it is the finest tonic in the world. Oh, if every mother would follow to the very letter this advice, how much misery, how much ill health, might then be averted!