The Columbia herald. [volume] (Columbia, Tenn.) 1850-1873, 1869-08-27
Summer Mortality.

"a man never sees good health again" !"
once said clever physician, when once
he begins to dissect himself" In other
words, over care of diet, and smattering
of medical knowledge keeps many a per-
son in chronic trouble about his health
The good old lady in the comedy, who
thanked her Maker that she had no nerves
having been born before nerves came in
fashion-were she living now, would ex-
press the same gratitude that she had no
digestive apparatus. Once it was the
nerves that were always in fault; now it
s.the stomach.
With the season of fruits and vegetables,
and the abundance of good, palatable and
wholesome food, comes the annual alarm
at summer ailments. Unquestionably,
many persons suffer inconvenience; many
children are sick, and not few die; but
it is not the children's fault that they
sicken and die. 1t is the error of their
guardians, the over care, or no care at all,
and one extreme is as bad as another.
We do not mean so much care in regard
to food, as care to improve the three
best hygienic agents, air, water and ex-
ercise. Give children well-ventilated
sleeping-rooms, take care that they
are kept clean, and let them alone for
exercise, and unless they are fed with re-
fuse food, and too much of it, nature will
manage the rest. They should not be
kept so clean as never to be permitted to
soil their fingers. They may roll in the
sand if they please, and will be better
rather than worse for it. But at night let
them not go to sleep in all the perspiration
with which the days work or romping
has filled the pores of their skins. We
carefully groom heated horse, and should
be at least as careful of our children and
ourselves. Rub the children down with a
sponge or a damp towel, and be sure that
they wear at night nothing that has done
duty through the day. Let the same care
be taken in the morning, and let their
clothing be loose and comfortable. They
need not be plunged too often in bath
tubs Man is not an amphibious animal,
though many nurses seem to think so; and
many of the pale children of wealthy
parents look as if all the color were
washed out of them, like faded garment.
Attention to the functions of the skin
would preserve the life of many a child.
Happily, such attention is within the reach
of everybody. 1t requires only patience,
and the "rule of not too much water
There are few mothers who could not, if
they would only think so, treat their child
ren to a run in the parks, street-car ride,
water trip, if only across one of the fer
ries once or twice week. These precau-
tons, with simple fOOd-which an old
fashioned matron pronounced to be "a lit
tie of everything wholesome that is go
ing"-are all the care that is ordinarily re-
quisite. The poor, who are crowded in
close closets, cannot of course do all that
is desirable, but much more could be done
than is done. If parents, and especially
fathers, would deny themselves indul-
gencies, which hare absolutely noxiOus as well
as expensive, they would have more money
and more leisure to devote to their families,
and the bills of mortality in cities would
not show the frightful preponderance of
"deaths under ten years of age, ifcommon
sense did but wait on common humanity.
-Pltilddelpltid Ledger