The woman's medical companion, and nursery-adviser : containing rules for preserving the health of unmarried females, directions to pregnant and lying-in women, and an account of their diseases together with instructions for the rearing of children from the hour of their birth, and an account of the diseases of infancy / by Henry McMurtrie.

  • McMurtrie, Henry, 1793-1865.
Date:
1871
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The woman's medical companion, and nursery-adviser : containing rules for preserving the health of unmarried females, directions to pregnant and lying-in women, and an account of their diseases together with instructions for the rearing of children from the hour of their birth, and an account of the diseases of infancy / by Henry McMurtrie. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    promptly and judiciously, take such deep ro as to be with difficulty eradicated, or even con trolled in after life. The proper moral educa- tion of young children is a subject which does not exactly come within the province of the present work; we have merely alluded to it, for the purpose of making a few observations on the influence which the indulgence of the passions in infancy has upon the liealth of the child. Crying, screaming, and various motions of the limbs and body, are the means by which the passions of fear and anger are expressed in an infant. Children, it is true, frequently cry from pain or uneasiness; while not unfrequently, particularly at a yery eat^y age, their cries would appear to be excited by a kind of instinc- tive impulse, there being no other cause t' which, apparently, they can be attributed Many authors have indeed conceived it to b improper to prevent- in any case, the crying infants, unless it proceed ft^m alisolute pain t> sickness, tiiey believe that, during this period of life, frequent fits of crying ave useful, by ex- panding the chest, developing the lungs, and calling into exercise the muscles of respiration. That, to a certain extent, these effects are pro- duced by the crying of infants, cannot be doubted. But it is not true, that crying is very common in infants during health, and when they are properly nursed ; nor that allowing them fre- quently to indulge in it, has any salutary effec*s: jn the contrary, it 's a common observation,