Domestic medicine; or, A treatise on the prevention and cure of diseases by regimen and simple medicines : With an appendix containing a dispensatory. For the use of private practitioners / by William Buchan.
- William Buchan
- Date:
- 1805
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Domestic medicine; or, A treatise on the prevention and cure of diseases by regimen and simple medicines : With an appendix containing a dispensatory. For the use of private practitioners / by William Buchan. Source: Wellcome Collection.
59/808 page 9
![does f^reater injury to his poilerity than the prodigal who fquanders the other. Of the Clothbig of Children. The clothing of an infant is fo fimple a matter, that it is furprifing how any perfon fhould err in ir; yet many children lofe their lives, and others are deformed, ' by inattention to this article. Nature knows of no ufe of clothes to an infant, but to keep it warm. All that is neceflfary for this purpofe, is to wrap it in a foft loofe covering Were a mother left to the dictates of Nature alone, fhe would certainly purfue this courfe. But the bufinefs of drefling an infant has long been out of the hands of mothers, and has at lad become a fecret which none but adepts pretend to underftand. From the mod early ages it has been thought neceflary, that a woman in labour fhould have fome perfon to attend her. This in time became a bufinefs; and, as in all others, thofe who were employed in it drove to outdo one another in the different branches of their profeflion. The drefling of a child came of courfe to be confidered as the midwife’s province; who no doubt imagined, that the more dexterity fhe could fhew in this article, the more her fkill would be admired. Her attempts were feconded by the vanity of parents, who, too often defirous of making a fliew of the infant • as foon as it was born, were ambitious to have as much finery heaped upon it as poffible. Thus it came to be thought as neceffary for a midwife to excel in bracing and dreffing an infant, as for a furgeon to be expert in applying bandages to a broken limb; gnd the poor • child, as foon as it came into the world, had as many rollers and wrappers applied to its body, as if every bone had been fraflured in the birth ; while thefe were often fo tight, as not only to gall and wound its tender frame, but even to obftruft the motion of the heart, ]|angs, and other organs neceffary to life. ‘ In](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22033191_0059.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
