Miss Beecher's Housekeeper and Healthkeeper: Containing Five Hundred Receipes for Economical and Healthful Cooking; also, Many Directions for Securing Health and HappinessBeecher, Catharine Esther
General
Miss Beecher's Housekeeper and Healthkeeper: Containing Five Hundred Receipes for Economical and Healthful Cooking; also, Many Directions for Securing Health and Happiness
Beecher, Catharine Esther
Cooking; Home economics
Cool bathing, in hot weather, is very useful; but the water should be
very little cooler than the skin of the child. When the constitution
is delicate, the water should be slightly warmed. Simply sponging the
body freely in a tub, answers the same purpose as a regular bath. In
very warm weather this should be done two or three times a day, always
waiting two or three hours after food has been given.
“When the stomach is peculiarly irritable, (from teething,) it is of
paramount necessity to withhold all the nostrums which have been so
falsely lauded as ‘sovereign cures for _cholera infantum_.’ The true
restoratives for a child threatened with disease are cool air, cool
bathing, and cool drinks of simple water, in addition to _proper_ food,
at stated intervals.”
In many cases, change of air from sea to mountain, or the reverse,
has an immediate healthful influence and is superior to every other
treatment. Do not take the advice of mothers who tell of this, that,
and the other thing, which have proved excellent remedies in their
experience. Children have different constitutions, and there are
multitudes of different causes for their sickness; and what might
cure one child, might kill another which _appeared_ to have the same
complaint. A mother should go on the general rule of giving an infant
very little medicine, and then only by the direction of a discreet
and experienced physician. And there are cases when, according to the
views of the most distinguished and competent practitioners, physicians
themselves are much too free in using medicines, instead of adopting
preventive measures.
Do not allow a child to form such habits that it will not be quiet
unless tended and amused. A healthy child should be accustomed to lie
or sit in its cradle much of the time; but it should occasionally be
taken up and tossed, or carried about for exercise and amusement.
An infant should be encouraged to _creep_, as an exercise very
strengthening and useful. If the mother fears the soiling of its nice
dresses, she can keep a long slip or apron which will entirely cover
the dress, and can be removed when the child is taken in the arms. A
child should not be allowed, when quite young, to bear its weight on
its feet very long at a time, as this tends to weaken and distort the
limbs.
Many mothers, with a little painstaking, succeed in putting their
infants into their cradle while awake, at regular hours for sleep; and
induce regularity in other habits, which saves much trouble. During
this training process a child may cry, at first, a great deal; but,
for a healthy child, this use of the lungs does no harm, and tends
rather to strengthen than to injure them, unless it becomes exceedingly
violent. A child who is trained to lie or sit and amuse itself, is
happier than one who is carried and tended a great deal, and thus
rendered restless and uneasy when not so indulged.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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