Badinage

“ We have endeavoured to illustrate the great obscurity of its operation by an allusion to generation, digestion, and other animal functions, with which it is equally obscure and inexplicable. It is similar to generation in this, that its influence does not pass from one species of animal to another; for the poison of the plague, that of the small pox, that of fever, and the venereal disease, do not affect brutes47, nor do the infectious diseases of brutes affect different species of them, nor the human species. ”

“ Sore throats, colds, pleurisies and disorders, attendant on a variable climate, are their complaints in the severe seasons; they make use of vegetable decoctions for the cure of these disorders; fevers prevail in summer. The women suffer very little in child-birth, and the attendant in those cases, plunges the new born infant into cold water, the mother bathing soon after, and is then covered up warm near a fire: she performs these ablutions and heatings successively for some time, and the infants are bandaged up in furs and pieces of bark, nearly in the same manner as in Canada. ”

“ On the other hand, should the infant be born with the disease—a circumstance of not infrequent occurrence—it must be remembered that its blood is charged with the poison, and is capable of infecting a healthy individual when it is brought into contact with any wound, abrasion or other breach of surface. ”

“ Another strange fact is, that savage nations use it freely with but few exceptions: on the other hand, in civilised life there are a great number who never touch it; but these abstainers little think that they carry in their countenances visible signs of ill-health, and their impurity of skin indicates that at some future time disease, in some form or other, will cause them to regret, in more ways than one, that their short-sighted neglect has prepared a soil ready to receive the seeds of some fever, and other maladies more deadly and obstinate. ”

“ Disease may result from some external cause like from a wound, from food causing poison or derangement of the digestive system, from water introducing impurities, from parasites that disturb normal functions, disorganize tissue or produce toxines, or from other abnormal conditions—all of which interfere with the normal functions of one or more organs, regions, or parts.
In most cases the disturbances are readily recognized. Swellings, bruises and wounds are located at a glance. When blood passes from nose, ears or intestines, a key to the trouble is at hand. ”

“ Though teething is a natural function, and to an infant in perfect health should be unproductive of pain, yet in general it is not only a fertile cause of suffering, but often a source of alarm and danger; the former, from irritation in the stomach and bowels, deranging the whole economy of the system, and the latter, from coma and fits, that may excite alarm in severe cases; and the danger, that eventuates in some instances, from organic disease of the head or spinal marrow. ”

“ They indicate to us that a healthful climate, with good air and water, are important factors in all true stirpiculture.
While all diseases which exhaust the physiological resources of the system are detrimental to the offspring, there are certain ones which are peculiarly so. Specific diseases or those resulting from a sensual life are the first to be mentioned. If the bodies of either father or mother become saturated with the poison, which is probably a germ, then the child born of such parents will certainly be infected and either die at birth or live only a short and feeble life. ”

“ If the disease has arisen from an impoverished state of living, and a consequent acrimonious state of the blood, altering its property, by a change of aliment, and more liberal invigoration of the system, will greatly tend to the promoting a speedy obliteration. Should a horse in high HEALTH, FLESH, and CONDITION, have received the disease by infection, BLEEDING, evacuants, or alteratives, should be brought into use in aid of external applications. ”

“ Each patient brought a hen, and, in his turn, handed it to the "medicine-man," who partially cut its throat and noticed its struggles on the sand. If it flopped only a little way, the ailment was not serious; if nearer to the water, it was dangerous; and, if to the water, death was certain. While we watched, a consumptive man passed on his hen, and sat, in a state of great feebleness, with his back to the wall of a house. The hen flopped far towards the water. The medicine-man rubbed the blood of the hen on the bare breast of the sick man, who then went his way. ”

“ The manner in which an infant is encircled in a bandage called the "roller," as if it had fractured ribs, compressing those organs—that, living on suction, must be, for the health of the child, to a certain degree distended, to obtain sufficient aliment from the fluid imbibed—is perfectly preposterous. Our humanity, as well as our duty, calls upon us at once to abrogate and discountenance by every means in our power. ”

“ The disease-producing germs are present in the body of the foetus, the fetal membranes, the discharge from the maternal passages, the faeces and milk of aborting animals. The male may carry the infection in the sheath, urethra and on the penis. The natural avenues of infection are the maternal passages and digestive tract.
It is very seldom that abortion is carried from one herd to another by means other than through the breeding of animals free from abortion to animals affected by this disease. ”

“ Severe malarial infection, syphilis, pregnancy, chronic gastro-intestinal disease, chronic gas-poisoning, are all, in different cases, known to have been causally associated with it, and it is probable that a congenital weakness of the bone-marrow has often to do with its production, as in many cases a family or hereditary history of the disease can be obtained. ”

“ Planted in the children's system as germs, or as mere predispositions, they are sometimes destroyed, beyond the possibility of returning, by a multitude of favorable conditions and precautions: in other instances, they begin at once their fatal work of destruction; or, again, they lie hidden for years, reappearing at length, remorseless and terrible, under the influence of sundry exciting causes. Thus age, sex, temperament, practices, habits, hygiene, surrounding conditions, act a part in the development of hereditary morbid activities. ”

“ The insufficient nourishment of the mother during her pregnancy, and the insufficient nourishment of [661] the child during the first years of his life, are especially fatal to him. Then those who are badly fed are predisposed to tuberculosis, scrofula, and rickets, which, in their turn, may be the causes of degeneracy.595 Rickety women often have a contraction of the pelvis, which hinders child-birth, and may cause a lesion to the infant’s brain. Note, for example, the opinion of Dr. Näcke, who says: “The social misery, bad hygiene and food ... ”

“ To which must be added, that great source of the destruction of female grace and beauty, as well as of female health, the tight stays, and other bandages, with which they are generally tortured in their early years by the active folly of their friends, which by displacing many of the viscera impedes their actions, and by compressing them together produces adhesions of one part to another, and affects even the form and aperture of the bones of the pelvis, through which the nascent child must be protruded. ”

“ To avert this misfortune they cover the child with a basket, kindle a fire of grass all round it, and smash a brass pot on the floor. Then they say that the baby is the fifth and not the fourth child, and the evil is thus removed. When one woman gives birth to a male and another to a female child in the same quarter of a village on the same day and they are attended by the same midwife, it is thought that the boy child will fall ill from the contagion of the girl child communicated through the midwife. ”

“ When a mother is the victim of any of the serious childbed complications such as convulsions, kidney disease, extensive loss of blood or blood poisoning, or runs a high temperature because of some disease occurring at the same time as the confinement, as, for example, appendicitis, scarlet fever, typhoid fever, etc. ”

“ Is it not surprising that common sense should not point out, even to the most ignorant, that those accursed bandages must heat the tender infant into a fever; must hinder the action of the muscles, and the play of the joints, so necessary to health and nutrition ”

“ Child-birth induces fainting, and sometimes death, only by the sudden abstraction of the stimulus of distention and pain.
In all those cases where purging or bleeding have produced death in the yellow fever or plague, when they have been used on the first or second day of those diseases, I suspect that it was occasioned by the quantity of the stimulus abstracted being disproportioned to the degrees of depression in the system. ”

“ The disease is characterized by malnutrition, 375pain, typical changes in the structure of the bones and hemorrhage in various parts of the body, most frequently in the gums and beneath the periosteum. The disease develops slowly, the first symptoms appearing between the seventh and tenth months. Tenderness or pain in the legs is perhaps the most common symptom and may be detected first by the baby’s crying when its diaper is changed or its stockings are put on. And a baby that previously has been cheerful, playful and active will prefer to lie quietly and will cry whenever it is touched. ”

“ To this cause may be attributed not a few of those distressing disorders which affect our infant population in large and populous cities, where defective nutriment, and want of pure air, elicit a variety of morbid appearances, of rare occurrence among the offspring of our peasantry. ”

“ The stronger and harder the skin, the better will a crisis be developed. Every sore and boil cannot be considered a crisis, some degenerate into disease, and have an inward tendency. In a proper crisis of boils, they rise, burst, and heal.”
“For itching rash in the arm, do not wear the bandage, unless great pain ensues, and in that case only at night.”
“Chopping or sawing wood is better exercise for the stomach and bowels than walking.” ”

“ The causes which lead to an enfeebled condition of the system may lead to abortion, whether it be an anæmia, the result of disease or lack of food, of the mode of life, or the locality in which the sufferer lives—of poisonous gases or poisons of other kinds slowly admitted to the system. These poisons, however, whether acute or chronic in the mother, may directly affect the foetus. ”

“ About one-half the children born in this country die before they are five years of age, and no doubt this terrible mortality is largely due to this instrument of torture known as the modern corset. Tight lacing is the cause of infantile mortality. It slowly but surely takes the lives of tens of thousands, and so effectually weakens and diseases, so as to cause the untimely death of millions more.
9. Bathing.—Next to godliness is cleanliness. A pregnant woman should take a sponge or towel-bath two or three times a week. It stimulates and invigorates the entire body. ”

“ The males sooner or later cease to feed, and attain to the sexually mature condition, emitting ripe milt when handled and gently squeezed. They live in this condition five or six months, taking no food and showing gradual wasting and disease of the bodily organs. The eyes and skin become ulcerated, the sight is entirely lost, and the bones become soft through loss of lime. ”

“ When I drew aside the shôji I was disconcerted by the painful sight which presented itself, for the people were pressing one upon another, fathers and mothers holding naked children covered with skin-disease, or with scald-head, or ringworm, daughters leading mothers nearly blind, men exhibiting painful sores, children blinking with eyes infested by flies and nearly closed with ophthalmia ”

“ While cleanliness in the female will, in those symptoms that are merely local in character, undoubtedly minimize the chances of infection by contact, the soil in which the germs of venereal disease flourish is distinctly an eliminative product embodied in the fluids of the reproductive tract. ”

“ The fæces should become thicker when the disease is tending to a crisis; they ought to be yellowish and not very fetid. It is favorable that round worms be passed with the discharges when the disease is tending to a crisis. [483] The belly, too, through the whole disease, should be soft and moderately distended; but excrements that are very watery, or white, or green, or very red, or frothy, are all bad. It is also bad when the discharge is small, and viscid, and white, and greenish, and smooth; but still more deadly appearances are the black, or fatty, or livid, or verdigris-green, or fetid. ”

“ Men are more subject to it than women, and intemperate climates predispose to it. The first symptoms of the disease are torpor, slow respiration, constipated bowels, urine like that of cattle, continued eructations, and strong venereal appetites; and when it is determined to the skin, the cheeks and chin become thickened and of a livid colour, the veins below the tongue are varicose, and eminences are formed all over the body, but especially on the forehead and chin. ”

“ Outside of this frightful mortality, how many children are born, inheriting eruptions of the skin, foul ulcerations swelling of the bones, weak eyes or blindness, scrofula, idiocy, stunted growth, and finally insanity, all on account of the father's early vices. The weaknesses and afflictions of parents are by natural laws visited upon their children. ”