Pye Henry Chavasse

“ I maintain that no one can be perfectly healthy unless he thoroughly wash his body—the whole of his body; if filth accumulate, which, if not washed off, it is sure to do, disease must, as a matter of course, follow. Besides, ablution is a delightful process; it makes one feel fresh and sweet, and young and healthy; it makes the young look handsome and the old look young! Thorough ablution might truly be said both to renovate and to rejuvenize! A scrupulously clean skin is one of the grand distinctive characteristics both of a lady and of a gentleman. ”

“ Milk contains every ingredient to build up the body, which is more than can be said of any other known substance. A child may live entirely, and become both healthy and strong, on milk, and on milk alone, as it contains every constituent of the human body. A child cannot “live by bread alone,” but he might on milk alone! Milk is animal and vegetable—it is meat and bread—it is a fluid, but as soon as it reaches the stomach it becomes a solid—solid food; it is the most important and valuable article of diet for a child in existence. ”

“ Let a child’s home be the happiest house to him in all the world; and to be happy he must be merry, and all around him should be merry and cheerful; and he ought to have an abundance of playthings, to help on the merriment.
If he has a dismal nurse, and a dismal home, he may as well be incarcerated in prison, and be attended by a jailer. It is sad enough to see dismal, doleful men and women, but it is a truly lamentable and unnatural sight to see a doleful child! The young ought to be as playful and as full of innocent mischief as a kitten. ”

“ Parts that should have full play are cramped and hampered; the chest is cribbed in with stays, the feet with tight shoes,—hence causing deformity, and preventing a free circulation of blood. The mind, that ought to be calm and unruffled, is kept in a constant state of excitement by balls, and concerts, and plays. Mind and body sympathize with each other, and disease is the consequence. Night is turned into day; and a delicate girl leaves the heated ball-room, decked out in her airy finery, to breathe the damp and cold air of night. ”

“ A child is made for play; his roguish little eye, his lithe figure, his antics, and his drollery, all point out that he is cut out for play—that it is as necessary to his existence as the food he eats, and as the air he breathes! ”

“ The hearty ringing laugh of a child is sweet music to the ear. There are three most joyous sounds in nature—the hum of a bee, the purr of a cat, and the laugh of a child. They tell of peace, of happiness, and of contentment, and make one for awhile forget that there is so much misery in the world. ”

“ I cannot refrain from reprobating the too common practice among parents of bringing up their boys to the professions. The anxieties and the heartaches which they undergo if they do not succeed (and how can many of them succeed when there is such a superabundance of candidates?) materially injure their health. “I very much wonder,” says Addison, “at the humor of parents, who will not rather choose to place their sons in a way of life where an honest industry cannot but thrive, than in stations where the greatest probity, learning, and good sense may miscarry. ”

“ How many a poor infant has fallen a victim to that crime!—for crime it may truly be called.
It is folly in the extreme for a mother to bate a milkman down in the price of his milk; if she does, the milk is sure to be either of inferior quality, or adulterated, or diluted with water; and woe betide the poor unfortunate child if it be either the one or the other! The only way to insure good milk is to go to a respectable cow-keeper, and let him be made to thoroughly understand the importance of your child having genuine milk, and that you are then willing to pay a fair remunerative price for it. ”

“ To develop the different organs, muscles, and other parts of the body, children require fresh air, a free use of their lungs, active exercise, and their bodies to be thrown into all manner of attitudes. Let a child mope in a corner, and he will become stupid and sickly. The march of intellect, as it is called, or rather the double quick march of intellect, as it should be called, has stolen a march upon health. ”

“ A modern writer, speaking of the life of a medical man, observes: “There is no career which so rapidly wears away the powers of life, because there is no other which requires a greater activity of mind and body. He has to bear the changes of weather, continued fatigue, irregularity in his meals, and broken rest; to live in the midst of miasma and contagion. If in the country, he has to traverse considerable distances on horseback, exposed to wind and storm—to brave all dangers to go to the relief of suffering humanity. ”

“ Play is absolutely necessary to a child’s very existence, as much as food and sleep; but in many parts of England where is he to have it? Play-grounds and play are the best schools we have; they teach a great deal not taught elsewhere; they give lessons in health, which is the grandest wealth that can be bestowed—“for health is wealth;” they prepare the soil for the future school-master; they clear the brain, and thus the intellect; they strengthen the muscles; they make the blood course merrily through the arteries; they bestow healthy food for the lungs; they give an appetite ”

“ In his inculcations the author does not assume that a child is a mere machine, to be made to go through certain movements by an older controlling hand, nor that it is to be left, like a young plant, to grow up in fruitless luxuriance, without pruning or grafting. He favors a large charter for nature, but he dwells also on the existence of natural laws, growing out of the very framework and constitution of a living body, an infraction of which, whether it be through ignorance, pedantic teaching, fashion or the intrusion of physic, is followed by injury to health and happiness. ”

“ She goes to bed, but, for the first few hours, she is too much excited to sleep; toward morning, when the air is pure and invigorating, and, when to breathe it, would be to inhale health and life, she falls into a feverish slumber, and wakes not until noonday. ”

“ Let children be dressed as children, not as men and women. Let them be taught that dress is quite a secondary consideration. Let health, and not fashion, be the first, and we shall have, with God’s blessing, blooming children, who will, in time, be the pride and strength of dear old England! ”

“ Horse exercise is for both boys and girls a splendid exercise; it improves the figure, it gives grace to the movements, it strengthens the chest, it braces the muscles, and gives to the character energy and courage.
Both boys and girls ought to be early taught to ride. There is nothing that gives more pleasure to the young than riding either on a pony or on a horse, and for younger children, even on that despised, although useful animal, a donkey. Exercise, taken with pleasure, is doubly beneficial. ”

“ If a child be either chicken-breasted, or if he be narrow-chested, are there any means of expanding and of strengthening his chest?
Learning ought to be put out of the question; attention must be paid to his health alone, or consumption will probably mark him as its own! Let him live as much as possible in the open air; if it be country, so much the better. Let him rise early in the morning, and let him go to bed betimes; and if he be old enough to use the dumb-bells, or, what is better, an india-rubber chest expander, he should do so daily. ”

“ How many there are who never turn upon the hinges of this world without a grinding that sets the teeth of a whole household on edge! And somehow or other it has been the evil fate of many of the best spirits to be so circumstanced; both men and women, to whom life is ‘sweet habitude of being,’ which has gone far to reconcile them to solitude as far less intolerable! ”

“ How many men are country curates, that might have made themselves aldermen of London by a right improvement of a smaller sum of money than what is usually laid out upon a learned education? A sober, frugal person, of slender parts and a slow apprehension, might have thrived in trade, though he starves upon physic; as a man would be well enough pleased to buy silks of one whom he could not venture to feel his pulse. Vagellius is careful, studious, and obliging, but withal a little thick-skulled; he has not a single client, but might have had abundance of customers. ”

“ How true and sad it is, that “a pale, delicate face, and clear eyes, indicative of consumption, are the fashionable desiderata at present for complexion.”
A growing girl requires plenty of good nourishment—as much as her appetite demands; and if she have it not, she will become either chlorotic, or consumptive, or delicate. Besides, the greatest beautifier in the world is health; therefore, by a mother studying the health of her daughter, she will, at the same time, adorn her body with beauty! I am sorry to say that too many parents think more of the beauty than of the health of their girls. ”

“ Besides, if indigestible or improper food be taken into the stomach, the blood will not only be made impure, but the stomach and the bowels will be disordered.
Do not let me be misunderstood: I am no advocate for a child having the same food one day as another—certainly not. Let there be variety, but let it be wholesome variety. Variety in a child’s (not in an infant’s) food is necessary. If he were fed, day after day, on mutton, his stomach would at length be brought into that state that in time it would not properly digest any other meat, and a miserable existence would be the result. ”

“ How can their spines be strengthened and be straight? How can their blood course merrily through their blood-vessels? How can their chests expand and be strong? Why, it is impossible! Ill health must be the penalty of such indolence, for Nature will not be trifled with! ”

“ Besides, there is an idiosyncrasy—a peculiarity of the constitution in some children—and Nature oftentimes especially points out what is good and what is bad for them individually, and we are not to fly in the face of Nature. “What is one man’s meat is another man’s poison.” If a child be forced to eat what he dislikes, it will most likely not only make him sick, but will disorder his stomach and bowels: food, if it is really to do him good, must be eaten by him with a relish, and not with disgust and aversion. ”

“ Home is far preferable to a school education for a child. If at home, he is under your own immediate observation, and is not liable to be contaminated by naughty children; 163for, in every school, there is necessarily a great mixture of the good and of the bad; and a child, unfortunately, is more likely to be led by a bad than by a good child.
Moreover, if the child be educated at home, the mother can see that his brain be not overworked. At school the brain is apt to be overworked, and the stomach, and the muscles to be underworked. ”

“ It is an abominable practice to cover a child’s head either with beaver or with felt, or with any thick, impervious material. It is a well-ascertained fact, that both beaver and silk hats cause men to suffer from headache, and to lose their hair—the reason being that the perspiration cannot possibly escape through them. Now, if the perspiration cannot escape, dangerous, or at all events injurious, consequences must ensue, as it is well known that the skin is a breathing apparatus, and that it will not with impunity bear interference. ”

“ In this country children are sent to school far too young. The mind is overtaxed before the body has had time to develop, and a debilitated constitution is too often the result. It is of little consequence whether a child reads at six years or not until it is ten. First develop the physical, then at the proper time the vigorous intellect will climb the hill of knowledge, leaving far behind the student whose constitution was destroyed by overcrowding the brain during the tender age of childhood. ”

“ Broths have been recommended, but, for my own part, I think that, for a young infant, they are objectionable; they are apt to turn acid on the stomach, and to cause flatulence and sickness; they sometimes disorder the bowels and induce griping and purging.
Whatever artificial food is used ought to be given by means of a bottle, not only as it is a more natural way than any other of feeding a baby, as it causes him to suck as though he were drawing it from the mother’s breast, but as the act of sucking causes the salivary glands to press out their contents, which materially assists digestion. ”

“ It is astonishing at how small an expense, with a little contrivance, the gloomy, quiet nursery may be converted into a cheerful, happy one, and a small plot of ground into a full-sized farm in the mind of the infant farmer. ”

“ I do not mean to say that rickets always proceeds from poorness of living—from poor milk. It sometimes arises from scrofula, and is an inheritance of one or of both the parents.
Rickety children, if not both carefully watched and managed, frequently, when they become youths, die of consumption. A mother, who has for some time neglected the advice I have just given, will often find, to her grievous cost, that the mischief has, past remedy, been done, and that it is now “too late!—too late!” ”

“ A wet-nurse ought never to be allowed to dose her little charge either with Godfrey’s Cordial, or with Dalby’s Carminative, or with Syrup of White Poppies, or with medicine of any kind whatever. Let her thoroughly understand this, and let there be no mistake in the matter. Do not, for one moment, allow your children’s health to be tampered and trifled with. A baby’s health is too precious to be doctored, to be experimented upon, and to be ruined by an ignorant person. ”

“ What is the best exercise for youths?
Walking or running, provided it be not carried to fatigue. The slightest approach to it should warn a youth to desist from carrying it further.
Walking exercise is not sufficiently insisted upon. A boy or a girl, to be in the enjoyment of good health, ought to walk at least ten miles every day. I do not mean ten miles at a stretch, but at different times of the day.
Some young ladies think it an awfully long walk if they manage a couple of miles! How can they, with such exercise, expect to be well? How can their muscles be developed! ”

“ A greater quantity of arterial blood is sent to the brain of those who are prematurely talented, and hence it becomes more than ordinarily developed. Such advantages are not unmixed with danger; this same arterial blood may excite and feed inflammation, and either convulsions, or water on the brain, or insanity, or, at last, idiocy may follow. How proud a mother is in having a precocious child! How little is she aware that precocity is frequently an indication of disease! ”

“ The school-mistress will live, even if the girls be half-starved. And what are we to expect from poor and insufficient nourishment to a fast-growing girl, and at the time of life, remember, when she requires an extra quantity of good sustaining, supporting food? A poor girl, from such treatment, becomes either consumptive or broken down in constitution, and from which she never recovers, but drags out a miserable existence. A cheap boarding-school is dear at any price. ”

“ Blessed be the hand that prepares a pleasure for a child, for there is no saying when and where it may again bloom forth. Does not almost everybody remember some kind-hearted man who showed him a kindness in the dulcet days of childhood? ”

“ There is nothing so injurious for a delicate boy, or for any one else, as idleness. Work, in moderation, enlivens the spirits, braces the nerves, and gives tone to the muscles, and thus strengthens the constitution. Of all miserable people, the idle boy or the idle man is the most miserable! If you are poor, of course you will bring him up to some calling; but if you are rich, and your boy is delicate (if he be not actually in a consumption) , you will, if you are wise, still bring him up to some trade or profession. ”

“ It must still be continually borne in mind that everything can be done in the way of prevention, and much in the way of cure, by a timely and judicious use of the ordinary hygienic means applied for the growth and preservation of the child, viz.: air, water, food, clothing, exercise of the body and nurture of the affections. The medicine-chest ought never to form part of the furniture of the nursery. Meddlesome medicine is bad, and that medicine is always meddlesome when it is applied without actual necessity, clearly indicated by a competent judge. ”