A practical treatise on the management and diseases of children / by R.T. Evanson and H. Maunsell.

  • Evanson, Richard Tonson, 1799?-
Date:
1847
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A practical treatise on the management and diseases of children / by R.T. Evanson and H. Maunsell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    should be freely exposed to light. The nursery should never be darkened during the day; and at night, it is better that the shutters should be left unclosed_, and no window curtains used. XIV. AIE. We hope the stress which we have laid upon the propriety of keep- ing up a due degree of warmth in the nursery, will not be interpreted as warranting any measure likely to interfere with a free access of air. Both objects are perfectly compatible. The purity of the air in which the child resides and sleeps should be secured, by providing means of ventilation, in a sufficient number of windows and a chimney, which latter is absolutely essential to the establishment of a current of air; and also by restricting the number of individuals residing in the apartment, within the narrowest possible limits. It has been abeady stated that a certain agitation in the atmosphere is healtliful; and, therefore, the nursery should be as large as possible, in order to favour motion of the air contained witliin it.^ But our atten- tions with regard to air, should not be confined to the nursery; the vivifying influence which it has been shewn to produce upon the sys- tem, by contact with the surface of the body, furnishes us with an explanation of the advantageous results which experience shews to be derivable from an exposure of the child to the open air as freely as possible, consistently with an observance of the principles already inculcated under other heads. It is this vivifying influence which renders the play in the open fields so much more useful than the most carefully directed exercises of the gymnasium. XV. HEAT. We have already incidentally said so much upon this subject, that any thing more would be merely repetition. We may, however, take the opportunity of controverting a very common fallacy, viz., that exposure to heat renders the body more susceptible of the ill efi'ects * Mr. Carmichael, in his admirable lectures on Scrofula, published in the 3d Vol. of the Medical Press, deprecates the practice, common in these coun- tries, of placing nurseries in the attic stories of houses, where they must of neces- sity be recipients of all the foul air generated in the apartments beneath. The caution is well worthy of being attended to. [Note to 3d Edition.]
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