Advice to a Mother on the Management of Her ChildrenChavasse, Pye Henry
Science
Advice to a Mother on the Management of Her Children
Chavasse, Pye Henry
Child care; Children -- Health and hygiene; Infants -- Health and hygiene
Rickets is owing to a want of a sufficient quantity of earthy matter
in the bones; hence the bones bend and twist, and lose their shape,
causing deformity. Rickets generally begins to show itself between the
first and second years of a child's life. Such children are generally
late in cutting their teeth, and when the teeth do come they are bad,
deficient of enamel, discoloured, and readily decay. A rickety child
is generally stunted in stature; he has a large head, with overhanging
forehead, or what nurses call a watery-head-shaped forehead. The
fontanelles, or openings of the head, as they are called, are a long
time in closing. A rickety child is usually talented; his brain seems
to thrive at the expense of his general health. His breast-bone
projects out, and the sides of his chest are flattened; hence he
becomes what is called chicken-breasted or pigeon-breasted; his spine
is usually twisted, so that he is quite awry, and, in a bad case, he
is hump-backed; the ribs, from the twisted spine, on one side bulge
out; he is round-shouldered; the long bones of his body, being soft,
bend; he is bow-legged, knock-kneed, and weak-ankled.
Rickets are of various degrees of intensity, the humpbacked being
among the worst There are many mild forms of rickets; weak ankles,
knocked-knees, bowed-legs, chicken-breasts, being among the latter
number. Many a child, who is not exactly hump-backed, is very
round-shouldered, which latter is also a mild species of rickets.
Show me a child that is rickety, and I can generally prove that it is
owing to poor living, more especially to poor milk. If milk were
always genuine, and if a child had an abundance of it, my belief is
that rickets would be a very rare disease. The importance of genuine
milk is of national importance. We cannot have a race of strong men
and women unless, as children, they have had a good and plentiful
supply of milk. It is utterly impossible. Milk might well be
considered one of the necessaries of a child's existence. Genuine,
fresh milk, then, is one of the grand preventatives, as well as one of
the best remedies, for rickets. Many a child would not now have to
swallow quantities Of cod-liver oil if previously he had imbibed
quantities of good genuine milk. An insufficient and a poor supply of
milk in childhood sows the seeds of many diseases, and death often
gathers the fruit. Can it be wondered at, when there is so much poor
and nasty milk in England, that rickets in one shape or another is so
prevalent?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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