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.

    71/136 (page 51)
    Empire, that in the twenty years from 1730 to ] 750 the total deaths under five years of age amounted to more than 74 per cent of the total births during the same period.^ Dr. Underhill also tells us^ that during ten years (unspecified) in the last century “ the average of births within the bills of mortality was 16,283, out of which were buried under five years of age 10,145,” or about 62 per cent. In the present day vm find it unnecessary thus to deprive a baby of fresh air and sunlight. I never hesitate to allow a healthy child to be taken out into the sunshine on the second or third day of its existence, if the season is mild and the weather fine, and I have never seen the least harm from such a practice. Of course in winter more precaution is necessary, and care should be taken to choose a specially mild day, with no violent wind, for the first trial, which should be made if possible while the sun is shining. The only precaution I would suggest, beyond warm and light clothing, is due protection to the eyes, which in the early days of infancy are very tender and likely to suffer from glare, but a shady hood, or a carefully held parasol, will give them all needfuk shelter. Our modern times have some special dangers of their own, and I suppose in these days of use * Dr. Andrew Combe’s Management of Infancy. Treatise on Diseases of Children, by Dr. Michael Underhill. London, 1799.