Advice to a wife and mother in two parts

by Pye Henry Chavasse

I do not mean to say that rickets always proceeds from poorness of living—from poor milk. It sometimes arises from scrofula, and is an inheritance of one or of both the parents.

Rickety children, if not both carefully watched and managed, frequently, when they become youths, die of consumption. A mother, who has for some time neglected the advice I have just given, will often find, to her grievous cost, that the mischief has, past remedy, been done, and that it is now “too late!—too late!”

271. 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-pudding, bread and milk, etc.

To harden the bones, let lime-water be added to the milk (a tablespoonful to each teacupful 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.