Buffon's Natural History. Volume 04 (of 10): Containing a Theory of the Earth, a General History of Man, of the Brute Creation, and of Vegetables, Minerals, &c. &cBuffon, Georges Louis Leclerc, comte de
History
Buffon's Natural History. Volume 04 (of 10): Containing a Theory of the Earth, a General History of Man, of the Brute Creation, and of Vegetables, Minerals, &c. &c
Buffon, Georges Louis Leclerc, comte de
Natural history
When a child is suffered to cry too violently, and too long, it may
in consequence be afflicted with a rupture, in which case an early
application of bandages is necessary; with this assistance the
complaint is removed with ease, without it the disease may last for
life.
The limits of my plan admit not a detail of every disease incidental to
children. I shall only remark, that worms, and all verminous diseases,
very evidently owe their origin to the nature of their food. Milk is a
kind of chyle, an unadulterated nutriment; it consists of organic and
generative substances, and, therefore, if not digested by the stomach,
and made use of in the expansion and growth of the body, it assumes,
by its essential activity, other forms, and produces animated beings,
particularly worms, in such quantities, that the infant is often in
danger of falling a victim to them. A part of the bad effects that
accrue from worms, might probably be prevented, by allowing children
to drink a little wine, because all fermented liquors counteract the
generation of worms, and besides contain but few organic nutritive
particles: it is chiefly by its action upon the solids that wine
gives strength, and it may be rather said to fortify the body than to
strengthen it. Besides, the generality of children are fond of wine, at
least easily accustomed to drink it.
However delicate the frame may be in infancy, it is yet less sensible
of cold than during any other period of life. As the pulse of infants
is more quick than that of adults, it may, from this circumstance
alone, be concluded, that the internal heat is proportionally greater.
On the same principle it is hardly to be doubted, that of this heat
small animals have a greater share than the large; it has invariably
been found, that, in the same degree the animal is small, the motion
of the heart and arteries is proportionally vigorous and quick; and
this is ever the case in the same as well as in different species. The
pulse of an infant, or of a man of small stature, is more frequent than
that of a grown person, or a man of a large size. The pulse of an ox is
slower, and a dog quicker than that of a man; and so precipitate are
the motions in the heart of an animal still smaller, as a sparrow, for
instance, they can hardly be counted.
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