Rensselaer Union, Volume 6, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 July 1874 — The Baby In Hot Weather. [ARTICLE]

The Baby In Hot Weather.

In July and August the baby becomes, or ought to become, a point of public interest. If grown men and women suffer from had ventilation, nneleanliness or indigestion, they have themselves to blame. But when the poor baby’is the victim it is amatterof deliberate cruelty. Summer after summer teething children fall in hecatombs, sacrificed to the ig noranee or carelessness of their patents. This year, however, at last, instructions have been published by the hoards of health in some neighboring cities by which the most uneducated mother may understand liow to protect her child from danger as far as possible during the season of heat and folk air. The directions are based upon plain principle? of common sense, which we would Suppose would he patent .to anybody Of ordinary intelligence, but which are unfortunately the very facts soonest' ignored and neglected. * Mothers, like Naaman of-old, are usually willing to try.any cure which any prophet may recommend —the more miraculous and difficult the better; but as for a steady washing of themselves or their children in tue waters of Jordan or Groton to make them whole, they are apt, like the Syrian, to sniff contemptuously at the idea, and go faithfully on their way through dirt to death. Washing, however, might be called the basis of a baby’s salvation through teething; a thorough sotisingof the little body in plenty of cold water every morning, and when the weather is extremely hot a tepid sponge bath at night; Washing, too, constantly of all clothes and cloths used by the infant, to afford it perfectly clean garments at all times. Whatever milk be given should be thoroughly sweet and cool; infants under two years should be restricted in their diet to milk, oatmeal mush, or gruel carefully prepared, and beef broth or minced raw beef in small quantities, There is a popular prejudice among uneducated women against the meanness of refusing food to “ their children which they eat themselves;” to which is owingone-half the deaths aniiong that class of infants. The swarms of sallow, puny, wizened-faced babies which we see at the doors of tenement houses arc fed on morsels of pork, vegetables, unraised bread, and occasionally sips of tea and lager-beer which may 4all to their mother’s lucky lot. It is not heat or malaria or teething against which the doctors have to contend so much as the obstinate ignorance of the parents. Fiesh air is of course a tonic and cure superior to any medicine; every hour passed by the child under the trees in %e Squares or on the rivers gives it a new chance for life. No anodynes or soothing syrups should be given except under medical direction. _ So far The doctors. There are other rules as practical in effect, but which only affection can suggest. One js the laying aside for the brief hot season the rigor of parental discipline. Many welltncaning* women feel it to be their duty to teach their children implicit obedience at the earliest age. and to punish any ill-temper or peevishness. Now, an infant never cries except when* hungry, hurt or sick; the cutting of the teeth freqiicntty affects the hrain and produces a nervous irritability, which relieves itself by peevish complaints or crying. To whip a child for such conduct is sheer cruelty, and simply increases what is an actual disease. Through these perilous two months the helpless little-creatures require not only the skillful care of a wise mother, hut T the brooding love of ‘the most tender one. If they donut /ret and cry against the discomforts and pain of a world into which they come without choice and which shows them just now its roughest side —what wonder?, —New Y«rk Tribune. , " >