Shut your mouth and save your life / by George Catlin ; with 29 illustrations from drawings by the author.
- George Catlin
- Date:
- 1890
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Shut your mouth and save your life / by George Catlin ; with 29 illustrations from drawings by the author. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.
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![and consequently the disgusting expressions of the other, which are so often seen. With the Brute creations, where there is less chance for habits or accidents to make derange- ments, we see the beautiful system of the regular- ity of the works of ]^ature's hand, and in their soundness and durability, the com,])leteness of her works, which we have no just cause to believe has been stinted in the physical construction of man. The contrasts between the two Societies, of Savage and of Civil, as regards the perfection and duration of their teeth, is quite equal to that of their Bills of Mortality, already shown; and I contend that, in both cases, the principal cause of the difference is exactly the same, that of res- piration through the mouth during the hours of sleep. Under the less cruel, and apparently more tender and affectionate, treatment of many Civilized mothers, their infants sleep in their arms, in their heated exhalation, or in cradles in overheated rooms, with their faces covered, with- out the allowance of a breath of vital air; where, as has been said, they from necessity gasp for breath until it becomes a habit of their infancy and childhood to sleep with their mouths wide open, which their tender mothers overlook, or are not cruel enough to correct; little thinking of the](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21045495_0057.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
