The Physical Training of ChildrenChavasse, Pye Henry
Science
The Physical Training of Children
Chavasse, Pye Henry
Child care; Children -- Health and hygiene
special recommendation did we not sometimes see the substitution by
parents, intelligent in other respects, of beer and wine, and even
diluted spirits, for beverage, and of highly seasoned dishes of meat,
pastries, cakes, etc., for food. Of milk it is truly said that “the
finest and the healthiest children are those who for the first four or
five years of their lives are fed _principally_ upon it.” The use of
light clothing with a view of hardening children is discountenanced,
as it deserves to be, and the present fashion of dressing children
meets the strongest censure, as being both adverse to health and
furnishing early lessons of vanity. The clothing should be of such
texture and material as to keep up the animal heat, and in a climate
like ours, as indeed in all northern climates or those misnamed
temperate, the vicissitudes of temperature in which are so great and
frequent, woollen undergarments can rarely be dispensed with. To
children, and invalids at all ages, they are indispensable. The dress,
whatever may be the fashion, should be easy fitting, and this more
particularly, as pointed out by the author, in the matter of shoes and
boots, the undue tightness of which is an abomination only second to
tight lacing of the chest and abdomen.
Dr. Chavasse in the earlier editions of his work had carefully
restricted himself to the domain of hygiene, and he was mainly induced
to enlarge his teaching by the advice of Sir Charles Locock, in years
gone by accoucheur to the queen. Following out this advice, he now
gives, as already intimated, the treatment of some of the more urgent
and serious diseases of infants and of children, to be carried out
when a medical man cannot instantly be procured and when delay might
be death. To a consideration of these he adds that of various ailments
and of accidents, and thus enables the mother, with the assistance of
discreet adults of the house, to have prompt recourse to the best
means of treating them. The concluding section of the volume contains
good and available advice for the prevention of diseases, the
insidious approach of which makes it very necessary to detect their
real character, and to adopt the best means of arresting farther
progress, as in the instances of consumption and scrofula in both
sexes, and curvature of the spine, most common in females.
Where there is so much to commend in plan and execution of the work of
Dr. Chavasse, I feel no inclination to hunt out minor defects, and can
have no hesitation in proclaiming him to be one of our most successful
co-laborers in the grand domain of hygiene, and particularly in his
chosen department, the “Physical Training of Children.” I must, at the
same time, congratulate you, my dear doctor, for your having selected
such a worthy companion in a course of sanitary instruction which you
are pursuing in connection with your more onerous professional
engagements.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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