Advice to the people in general, with regard to their healthTissot, S. A. D. (Samuel Auguste David)
Science
Advice to the people in general, with regard to their health
Tissot, S. A. D. (Samuel Auguste David)
Hygiene -- Handbooks, manuals, etc. -- Early works to 1800; Medicine, Popular -- Early works to 1800
A Child who has already attained to a few Years, and who is surrendered
up more to his own Exercise and Vivacity, feels other Calls; his Way of
Life is become a little more various and irregular, whence his Appetite
must prove so too. Hence it would be inconvenient to subject him over
exactly to one certain Rule, in the Quantity of his Nourishment, or the
Distance of his Meals. The Dissipation or passing off of his Nutrition
being unequal, the Occasions he has for repairing it cannot be precisely
dated and regular. But with Respect to very little Children in Arms, or
on the Lap, a Uniformity in the first of these Respects, the Quantity of
their Food, very consistently conduces to a useful Regularity with
Respect to the second, the Times of feeding them. Sickness is probably
the only Circumstance, that can warrant any Alteration in the Order and
Intervals of their Meals; and then this Change should consist in a
Diminution of their usual Quantity, notwithstanding a general and fatal
Conduct seems to establish the very Reverse; and this pernicious Fashion
authorizes the Nurses to cram these poor little Creatures the more, in
Proportion as they have real Need of less feeding. They conclude of
Course, that all their Cries are the Effects of Hunger, and the Moment
an Infant begins, then they immediately stop his Mouth with his Food;
without once suspecting, that these Wailings may be occasioned by the
Uneasiness an over-loaded Stomach may have introduced; or by Pains whose
Cause is neither removed nor mitigated, by making the Children eat;
though the meer Action of eating may render them insensible to slight
Pains, for a very few Minutes; in the first Place, by calling off their
Attention; and secondly, by hushing them to sleep, a common Effect of
feeding in Children, being in fact, a very general and constant one, and
depending on the same Causes, which dispose so many grown Persons to
sleep after Meals.
A Detail of the many Evils Children are exposed to, by thus forcing too
much Food upon them, at the very Time when their Complaints are owing to
Causes, very different from Hunger, might appear incredible. They are
however so numerous and certain, that I seriously wish sensible Mothers
would open their Eyes to the Consideration of this Abuse, and agree to
put an End to it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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