Shut your mouth and save your life / by George Catlin.

  • George Catlin
Date:
1878
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Shut your mouth and save your life / by George Catlin. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    be the omission in education which sanctions a de- parture from the full and natural use of this wise ar- rangement ! When I have seen a poor Indian woman in the wilderness, lowering her infant from the breast, and pressing its lips together as it falls asleep in its cradle in the open air, and afterwards looked into the Indian multitude for the results of such a practice, I have said to myself, ‘ glorious education ! such a Mother deserves to be the nurse of Emperors/ And when I have seen the careful, tender mothers in civilized life, covering the faces of their infants sleeping in overheated rooms, with their little mouths open and gasping for breath; and afterwards looked into the multitude, I have been struck with the evident evil and lasting results of this incipient stage of education ; and have been more forcibly struck, and shocked, when I have looked into the Bills of Mor- tality, which I believe to be so frightfully swelled by the results of this habit, thus contracted, and practised in contravention to Nature’s design. There is no animal in nature, excepting Man, that sleeps with the mouth open; and with mankind, I be- lieve the habit, which is not natural, is generally confined to civilized communities, where he is nurtured and raised amidst enervating luxuries and unnatural warmth, where the habit is easily contracted, but carried and practised with great danger to life in different latitudes