Rules for the preservation of Health, and simple Recipes found often efficacious in common diseases and slight injuries—Directions for preparing Remedies and ministering to the Sick and Suffering—The Toilet, or hints and suggestions for the preservation of Beauty, with some useful Recipes for those who need them.
335. Means of preserving Health.—Light and sunshine are needful for your health. Get all you can; keep your windows clean. Do not block them up with curtains, plants, or bunches of flowers: these last poison the air in small rooms.
Fresh air is needful for your health. As often as you can, open all your windows, if only for a short time, in bad weather; in fine weather, keep them open, but never sit in draughts. When you get up, open the windows wide, and throw down the bed-clothes, that they may be exposed to fresh air some hours daily before they are made up. Keep your bed-clothes clean; hang them to the fire when you can. Avoid wearing at night what you wear in the day. Hang up your day clothes at night. Except in the severest weather, in small crowded sleeping-rooms, a little opening at the top of the window-sash is very important; or, you will find one window-pane of perforated zinc very useful. You will not catch cold half so easily by breathing pure air at night. Let not the beds be directly under the windows. Sleeping in exhausted air creates a desire for stimulants.
Pure water is needful for your health. Wash your bodies as well as your faces, rubbing them all over with a coarse cloth. If you cannot wash thus every morning, pray do so once a week. Crying and cross children are often pacified by a gentle washing of their little hands and faces—it soothes them. Babies' heads should be washed carefully, every morning, with yellow soap. No scurf should be suffered to remain upon them. Get rid of all slops and dirty water at once, but do not throw them out before your doors; and never suffer dead cabbage-leaves or dirt of any kind to remain there; all these poison the air, and bring fevers. All bad smells are poison; never rest with them. Keep your back yards clean. Pig-sties are very injurious; slaughter-houses are equally hurtful: the smells from both excite typhus fever, and cause ill health. Frederick the Great said, that one fever was more fatal to him than seven battles. Disease, and even death, is often the consequence of our own negligence. Wash your rooms and passages at least once a week; use plenty of clean water; but do not let your children stay in them while they are wet—it may bring on croup or inflammation of the chest. If you read your Bibles—which it is earnestly hoped you do—you will find how cleanliness, both as to the person and habitation, was taught to the Jews by God himself; and we read in the 4th chapter of Nehemiah, that when they were building their second temple, and defending their lives against their foes, having no time for rest, they contrived to put off their clothes for washing. It is a good old saying, that Cleanliness is next to Godliness. See Heb. x. 22.
Wholesome food is needful for your health. Buy the most strengthening. Pieces of fresh beef and mutton go the farthest. Eat plenty of fresh salt with food; it prevents disease. Pray do not let your children waste their pocket-money in tarts, cakes, sugar-plums, sour fruit, &c.; they are very unwholesome, and hurt the digestion. People would often, at twenty years of age, have a nice little sum of money to help them on in the world, if they had put in the savings-bank the money so wasted. Cocoa is cheaper and much more nourishing than tea. None of these liquids should be taken hot, but lukewarm; when hot, they inflame the stomach, and produce indigestion. All kinds of intoxicating drinks are to be avoided, or taken in the utmost moderation. If possible, abstain from them altogether. Money saved from drink, will help to educate your children, and make your homes happier.
We are all made to breathe the pure air of heaven, and therefore much illness is caused by being constantly in-doors. This is especially the case with mothers of families, young milliners, ironers, shoe-makers, tailors, &c. Let such persons make a point, whenever it is possible, of taking exercise in the open air for at least an hour and a half, daily. Time would be saved in the long-run, by the increased energy and strength gained, and by the warding off of disease.
Be sure to get your children vaccinated, between the third and sixth month after birth, before teething begins, and when they are in a good state of health for it. This would save a great many lives. On no account give your children laudanum, or any kind of sleeping medicine; numbers are killed by it.
336. Directions in severe Sickness.—Whenever any one of your family is taken violently ill, send as soon as possible for the most skilful physician—and follow, carefully, his orders. But, many times, the mother is the best physician, and the only one needed for her children, if she has been trained to take proper care of her own health, as every woman should be. The following recipes and directions may be of great service to young mothers, and those who have not been accustomed to minister to the sick.