The complete servant: Being a practical guide to the peculiar duties and business of all descriptions of servants, from the housekeeper to the servant of all-work, and from the land steward to the foot-boy. With useful receipts and tablesAdams, Samuel, servant
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The complete servant: Being a practical guide to the peculiar duties and business of all descriptions of servants, from the housekeeper to the servant of all-work, and from the land steward to the foot-boy. With useful receipts and tables
Adams, Samuel, servant
Home economics; Household employees
Its management for the first two months, cannot be too gentle, kind, or
tender. Nothing should be done at first that can give it uneasiness;
therefore, next to its health and well-being, regard should be had to
its disposition, and the regulation of its temper; with this view also,
the most rational way is to let the infant enjoy all the liberty it
possibly can, without being restrained by its clothing, or starved by
system. To set a child upright before the end of the first month is
hurtful: afterwards the nurse may begin to set it up and dance it by
degrees. It must be kept as dry as possible.
The clothing should be very light, and not too long, so that the legs
may be got at with ease, in order to have them often rubbed in the
day, with a warm hand, or flannel, and particularly the inside of
them. Rubbing the child all over takes off scurf, and promotes the
circulation of the blood.
A nurse ought to keep a child as little in her arms as possible, lest
the legs should be cramped, and the toes turned inwards. Let her always
keep the child’s legs loose. The oftener the posture is changed, the
better.
For the first fortnight or three weeks it should be always laid on
a bed, except when taken up to supply its wants, which will give it
habits of cleanliness at a very early age.
It may be very comfortably laid on a cushion, where it can be in no
danger of falling, nor of any thing falling on it. Some one should sit
by it, and divert and cheer it, if necessary, and take it up instantly,
when it expresses the least dissatisfaction. A nurse should make it a
strict rule, that the child should be in her own view, in whatever she
may be employed.
By slow degrees, the infant may be accustomed to exercise, both
within doors and in the open air: but it never should be moved about
immediately after sucking or feeding, as that will be apt to sicken it.
Exercise should be given it by carrying it about, and gently dandling
it in the arms; tossing an infant about, and exercising it in the open
air, in fine weather, is of the greatest service to it, in preventing
distortion. In cities, children ought not to be kept in hot rooms, but
to have as much air as possible; want of exercise being the cause of
rickets, large heads, weak joints, a contracted breast, and diseased
lungs, besides a numerous train of evils.
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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