Advice to a wife and mother in two parts

by Pye Henry Chavasse

If a baby’s bowels be either regular or relaxed, lump sugar is the best for the purpose of sweetening his food; if his bowels are inclined to be costive, brown sugar ought to be substituted for lump sugar, as brown sugar acts on a young babe as an aperient, and, in the generality of cases, is far preferable to physicking him with opening medicine. An infant’s bowels, whenever it be practicable (and it generally is), ought to be regulated by a judicious dietary rather than by physic.

VACCINATION.

45. Are you an advocate for vaccination?

Certainly. I consider it to be one of the greatest blessings ever conferred upon mankind. Small-pox, before vaccination was adopted, ravaged the country like a plague, and carried off thousands annually; and those who did escape with their lives were frequently made loathsome and disgusting objects by it. Even inoculation (which is cutting for the small-pox) was attended with danger—more especially to the unprotected—as it caused the disease to spread like wildfire, and thus it carried off immense numbers.

Vaccination is one and an important cause of our increasing population; small-pox, in olden times, decimated the country.

46. But vaccination does not always protect a child from small-pox?

I grant you that it does not always protect him, neither does inoculation; but when he is vaccinated, if he take the infection, he is seldom pitted, and very rarely dies, and the disease assumes a comparatively mild form. There are a few, very few fatal cases recorded after vaccination, and these may be considered as only exceptions to the general rule; and, possibly some of these may be traced to the arm, when the child was vaccinated, not having taken proper effect.

If children and adults were revaccinated,—say every seven years after the first vaccination,—depend upon it, even these rare cases would not occur, and in a short time small-pox would only be known by name.

47. Do you consider it, then, the imperative duty of a mother in every case to have, after the lapse of every seven years, her children revaccinated?

I decidedly do; it would be an excellent plan for every person, once every seven years, to be revaccinated, and even oftener, if small-pox be rife in the neighborhood. Vaccination, however frequently performed, can never do the slightest harm, and might do inestimable good. Small-pox is both a pest and a disgrace, and ought to be constantly fought and battled with until it be banished (which it may readily be) the kingdom.