HARDENING THE CONSTITUTION.
Mistakes about hardening children. Their clothing. Much cold enfeebles.
The Scotch Highlanders. The two extremes equally fatal--over-tenderness
and neglect. An interesting anecdote from Dr. Dewees.
While I have been very particular in enjoining on my readers the
importance of thoroughly ventilating their dwellings, I have also
insisted upon the necessity of taking children abroad, as much as
possible. Not, however, to harden them, so much as to give them a more
free access to air and light than they can have at home; and also--when
they are old enough--to cultivate the faculties of attention,
comparison, &c.
The practice of attempting to harden children by frequent exposure to
air much colder than that to which they have been accustomed, without
sufficient additional clothing, is open to the same objections which
have been brought against cold bathing. Under the management of a
judicious medical practitioner, it may do great good to a few
constitutions; but its indiscriminate use would injure a thousand
infants for one who was benefited.
True it is that if the child is protected against cold, no harm, but on
the contrary much good may result, from carrying him abroad into the
fresh air, even in very cold weather. But what can be more painful than
to see the little sufferers carried along when their limbs are purple,
or benumbed with cold? And how idle it is to hope that such exposure
hardens or improves the constitution!
It is on the same mistaken principle that many adults go thinly clad,
late in the fall. I have seen men in November and December beating and
rubbing their hands, who, on being asked why they did not wear mittens,
replied, that if they should wear one pair of mittens so early in the
season, they should want two in the winter.
Now I cheerfully admit that to put on additional clothing before the
severity of the weather demands it, actually produces the effect here
supposed; but to endure severe cold, on the contrary, never hardens
anybody. Nay, more, it enfeebles. Cold, when combined with the evils of
_poverty_, produces more mischief and destroys more lives than any one
disease in the whole catalogue of human maladies.
Adam Smith says that it is not uncommon for mothers in the Highlands of
Scotland, who have borne twenty children, to have only two of them
alive.
It may be difficult to say whether children are oftener destroyed by
over-tenderness than by neglect, and the evils incident to poverty. Both
extremes are common; while the happy medium--that of conducting a
child's education upon the principles of physiology, is rarely known,
and still more rarely followed.
I have been much amused, and not a little instructed, by the following
anecdote on this point, from Dr. Dewees:
We were speaking with a lady who had lost three or four children with
"croup," who informed us she was convinced, from absolute experiment,
that there was nothing like exposure to all kinds of weather to protect
and harden the system. By her first plan of managing her children, which
was by keeping them very warmly clad, she said she lost several by the
croup; but since she had adopted the opposite scheme, her children had
been perfectly healthy, and never had betrayed the slightest disposition
to that terrible disease which had robbed her of her children.
Perhaps, madam, we observed, you did not, in making your first
experiments, attend to a number of details which might be thought
essential to the plan. You did not probably take the proper precautions
when you sent them into the cold air, or observe what was important for
them when they returned from it.
"Oh, yes," she replied, "I took every possible care when they, were
going out. I always made them wear a very warm great coat, well lined
with baize, and a fur cape or collar. I always made them wear a
'comfortable' round their necks, made of soft woollen yarn. And as for
their feet, they were always protected by socks or over-shoes lined with
wool or fur, as the weather might be wet or dry."
Do you believe, madam, they were kept at a proper degree of warmth by
these means?
"Oh, certainly. Indeed, rather too warm; for they would often be in a
state of perspiration, they told me, when in the open air; especially if
they ran, slid, or skated."
And what was done when they were thus heated?
"Oh, they got cool enough before they reached home."
And would they receive no injury in passing from this state of
perspiration to that of chill?
"Not at all; for when this happened, I always made them take a little
warm brandy, or wine and water, and made them toast their feet well by
the fire." [Footnote: This absurd custom is a fruitful source of that
distressing condition of the hands and feet, in winter, called
"chilblains."]
Did they sleep in a cold or warm room?
"In a warm room. A good fire was always made in the stove before they
went to bed, which kept them quite warm all night."
Would they never complain of being cold towards morning, when the stove
had become cold?
"Yes, certainly; but then there were always at hand additional
bed-clothes, with which they could cover themselves."
And did they always do it?
"Oh, I suppose so."
Well, madam, how did you carry your second plan into execution, which
you say was attended with such happy results?
"I began by not letting them put on their great coats, except when the
weather was so cold as to require this additional covering, and did not
permit them to wear a 'comfortable' or fur round their necks. I took
away their over-shoes, and if their feet chanced to get wet, (for they
were always provided with good sound shoes,) the shoes were immediately
changed, if they were at home. If the weather was wet, or unusually
cold, they were permitted to wear their great coats, but not without.
If they came home very cold, they were not allowed to approach the fire
too soon. I gave them no warm, heating drinks, and accustomed them to
sleep in rooms without fire."
Who does not recognize, in this second plan for the enjoyment of air and
exercise, as judicious a plan of physical education, so far as it goes,
as can well be pointed out? We were so successful as to convince this
lady, in a very short time, that our own plan of exposing the body was
precisely the one she had pursued with so much success.
We also inquired of her what plan she pursued with her children, when
too young to be submitted to the rules just mentioned. She informed us
that it was the same system throughout, only the details varied as
circumstances of age, &c. made it necessary. That is, she sent her
children into the open air at very early periods of their lives,
provided in summer it was neither too wet nor too warm; in winter, when
the air was mild, dry and clear--but always carefully wrapped up, that
their little extremities might not suffer from cold. She never suffered
them to sleep in the open air, if it could be avoided; to prevent which,
as much as possible, she constantly charged the nurse to bring the
children home, as soon as she found them disposed to sleep, unless it
was when they were very young, at which time it was impossible to guard
against it.
And when her children were sufficiently old to walk, she took care to
prepare them properly for it, whether it might be in warm, cold, or
moderate weather. She never sent them abroad for pleasure at the risk of
encountering a storm of any kind; nor permitted them to walk at the
hazard of getting wet or very muddy feet.
Were the constitutions of your children pretty much the same? we
demanded of this lady.
"No; one of my boys was extremely feeble, from his very birth."
Did you treat him precisely as you did the others?
"Yes, as far as regarded principles; that is, I permitted him to bear as
much of cold, heat or wet as his constitution would endure without pain
or injury. The degrees, however, were very different from those his
brothers bore, had they been determined by the measurement of the
thermometer, but precisely the same in effect, as far as could be
ascertained by consequences. Thus, if he were exposed to the same
temperature as his brothers, he experienced no more inconvenience from
it, when it was very low, than they, because he had additional covering
to protect him."