Litchfield enquirer., 1860-03-15

WHY DO CHILDREN DIE !-The reason
 why children die, says Halls Journal ot
 HeaAh, is because they are not taken Care of
 From the day ofbirth they are stuffed with
 food, choked with physic, slushed with wa
 ter, sutfocated in hot rooms, steamed in bed clothes. So much for indoors. When per
 mitted to breathe breath of air once week
 in summer, and once or twice during the coldest months, ohly the nose is permitted to peep into daylight. A little later they are sent out with no clothes at all, as to the parts of the body which most need protec- tion. Bare legs, bare arms. bare necks, girted middlemost, with an inverted umbrella to collect the air and chill the other parts of the body. A stout, strong man goes out on a cold day with gloves and overcoat, woolen stockings and thick, double-soled boots, with cork between and rubber over. The same day child of three years old, an infant in flesh, and blood. and bone, and constitution. goes out with soles as thin as paper, cotton socks, legs uncovered to the knees, neck bare, an exposure which would disable the nurse, kill the mother in fortnight, and make the father an invalid for weeks. And why To harden them to mode of dress which they are never expected to practice. They ac- custom them to exposure which dozen years later would be considered downright foolery. To rear children thus for the slaughter pen, and then lay it to the Lord is too bad. We don't think the Almighty has any hand in it. And to draw comfort from the presumption that he has any agency in the death of child, is presumption and a ,,1 ,b,S Martineau says about Infant Mortality" : The fact is proved that in England 100, ,O00 persons die needlessly every year, and of this number 10000 are children under five years of age. Of all the infants born in England, above 40 per cent die before they are five years old. Yet what creature is so tenacious of life as baby? Those who know the creature best say they never des- pair of an infants life while it breathes, and mcstof us have witnessed some recoveries which are called miraculous. There is also no creature so easily manageable as an in fant, so easily kept healthy and happy. merely by not interfering with the usual course of things. How, then, can this pro- digious amount of killing go on iu country where infanticide is not an institution It is precisely because the natural course of things is interfered with that infants die as they do. Nature provides their first food, and if they do not get it whose fault is it :? The great majority of mothers must be nat urally able to nurse their own infants. Poor women do it as matter of course; and if gentlewomen did it as simply and as natural ly, that one change would greatly modify the average of deaths Gentlewomen may not be aware of this, because the doctor is romplaisant in bringing q wet nurse, and the indolent mother is unaware that her owu infant probably suffers, though it does not die, from being put to the wrong breast, while it never cutters her head that the nurse's baby probably dies If, of the 40 per cent. of English infants who die yearly, we could know how many are the children of wet-nurses, the fact might startle the fine ladies who suborn the mothers, and might bring no small amount of reproach on the complaisant doctors. When the kind of food is changed, nature is still far from being deferred to as she ought.