The care of infants : a manual for mothers and nurses / by Sophia Jex-Blake.

  • Sophia Jex-Blake
Date:
1903
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The care of infants : a manual for mothers and nurses / by Sophia Jex-Blake. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    125/136 (page 105)
    CUAi*. IX.] CHIEF NATUKAL FUNCTIONS. carefully, to prevent such violation, and so to render the physician’s aid unnecessary. The main points to which I have endeavoured to direct attention are the great natural functions, which may be briefly summed up as follows:— 1. Nutrition or Feeding.—I have tried to ex- plain the nature of an infant’s digestive apparatu.s, the kind of food that it needs, and can make use of, and the precautions that should be taken in giving such food. 2. Fiesjpnation or Breathing.—The need of oxygen in the various functions and tissues of the body, the chief mode by which its constant supply is to be provided; and the care that we must take that nothing shall interfere with that supply, or with the excretion of the waste products derived from its changes. 3. Calorification, or the maintenance of animal warmth, which needs more attention in the infant than in the adult, because of the partial deprivation of one main source of heat,—muscular activity. 4. Excretion by the skin, as well as by the lungs and bowels, of the waste tissues that have fulfilled their purpose in the body, and now need removal from it. These have been the principal topics that I have tried to explain, so as to enforce as clearly as possible the practical duties that devolve on those who have the care of infants, viz.— 1. That the infant shall be supplied with suit-