Endeavour to harden the body, but without resorting to violent means. A child is constitutionally weak and irritable to a high degree; hence we should endeavour to diminish this irritability, in order to procure it the greatest happiness of life, a firm body, whence may result a sound mind.
Such management is highly advantageous, as it will enable children to support every species of fatigue and hardship, when they become adults.
The plan of hardening children may, however, be carried to excess. An extravagant attempt to strengthen youth, deprives them of all their natural susceptibility of excitement, renders them insensible, and produces many bad effects, while they only acquire temporary energy, which decreases as they advance in years, and is attended with an early loss of their primitive vigour.
All attempts to render children hardy must, therefore, be made by gradual advances: for nature admits of no sudden transition. When children have once been accustomed to a hardy system of education, such a plan must be strictly adhered to.
The child’s skin is to be kept perfectly clean by washing its limbs morning and evening, and likewise its neck and ears; beginning with warm water, till, by degrees, it will not only bear, but like to be washed with cold.
After it is a month old, if it has no cough, fever, nor eruption, the bath should be colder and colder (if the season be mild) and by degrees it may be used as it comes from the spring. After carefully drying the whole body, head, and limbs, a second dry soft cloth, somewhat warmed, should be gently used, to take all the damp from the wrinkles or soft parts of the body. Then rub the limbs; but when the body is rubbed, take special care not to press upon the stomach or belly. On these parts, the hand should move in a circle, because the bowels lie in that direction. If the skin be chafed, hair-powder is to be used. The utmost tenderness is necessary in drying the head; and a small, soft, brush, lightly applied, is safer than a comb.
Clean cloths, every morning and evening, will tend greatly to a child’s health and comfort.
The dress of the child by day should be light and loose, and for the night, it may be a shirt, a blanket to tie on, and a thin gown to tie over the blanket.
The unnecessary haste in which some nurses are accustomed to dress children, cannot be too strongly reprehended. In addition to this hurried dressing, its clothes are often injuriously tight. Pins should never be used in an infant’s clothes; and every string should be so loosely tied, that two fingers may be introduced under it. Bandages round the head should be strictly forbidden, for to this error many instances of idiotism, fits, and deformity, may be traced.
Never allow the infant to be held opposite to open doors and windows. The air is beneficial, when it is in motion, and the weather is moderate, but it should always have some covering besides that which it wears in the house, when taken out; and it must not be laid on the cold ground, nor allowed to step on it, when it begins to use its feet. The intense heat of a summer day should likewise be avoided; excessive heat or cold being equally injurious.