This shocking circumstance is enough, one would think, to deter every mother or nurse, who becomes acquainted with it, from using needles in infants’ clothes.  Happy would it be, if, in banishing needles, they would contrive to banish pins also, and adopt either the plan of Dr. Dewees, or one still more rational.

SEC. 9. Remaining Wet.

On the subject of changing the wet clothing of a child, there is a strange and monstrous error abroad; which is, that by suffering them to remain wet and cold, we harden the constitution.  The filthiness of this practice is enough to condemn it, were there nothing else to be said against it.

It is insisted on by many, I know, that as water which is salt, when it is applied to the skin, and suffered to remain long, while it secures the point of hardening the child, prevents all possibility of its taking cold, it hence follows, that wet diapers are not injurious.  But this is a mistake.  Every time an infant is allowed to remain wet, we not only endanger its taking cold, but expose it to excoriations of the skin, if not to serious and dangerous inflammation.  In short, if frequent changes are not made, whatever some mothers and nurses may think, they may rest assured, that the health of the child must sooner or later suffer as the consequence.

Nor is it enough to hang up a diaper by the fire, and, as soon as it is dry, apply it again.  It should be clean, as well as dry.  Let us not be told, that it is troublesome to wash so often.  Everything is in a certain sense troublesome.  Everything in this world, which is worth having, is the result of toil.  Nothing but absolute poverty affords the shadow of an excuse for neglecting anything which will promote the health, or even the comfort of the tender infant.

Of the impropriety and danger of suffering wet clothes to dry upon us, I shall speak elsewhere; as well as of the evil of suffering children to remain dirty,—­their skins or their clothing.

SEC. 10. Remarks on the Dress of Boys.

Whatever tends to disturb the growth of the body, or hinder the free exercise of the limbs, during the infancy and childhood of both sexes is injurious.  And as every mother has the control of these things, I have thought it desirable to append to this chapter a few thoughts on the particular dress of each sex.  I begin with that of boys.

“Nothing can be more injurious to health,” says a foreign writer, “than the tight jacket, buttoned up to the throat, the well-fitted boots, and the stiff stock.”  And his remarks are nearly as applicable to this country as to England.  The consequences of this preposterous method of dressing boys, are diminutive manhood, deformity of person, and a constitution either already imbued with disease, or highly susceptible of its impression.

No part of the modern dress of boys is more absurd, than the stiff stock, or thick cravat.  It is not only injurious by pressing on the jugular veins, and preventing the blood from freely passing out of the head, but, by constantly pressing on the numerous and complex muscles of the neck, at this period of life, it prevents their development; because whatever hinders the action of the muscular parts, hinders their growth, and makes them even appear as if wasted.