The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1904-07-23
Frail Children.

The summer is the golden time for
strengthening and developing weakly
children, of whom there are always a
larger percentage than there ought to
be.
The school period requires too much
from the mental organisms of this
class of children, who come to their va
cation time thin, wan and pale, being
too often merely punches of nerves.
Children who manifest a low degree
of vitality as evidenced by lack of in
! terest in play and childish amusements,
need our tenderest care and the best of
! hygienic environment. By this l do
not mean parental business or over
| attention, which is to be avoided, but
| the avoidance of undue exposure TO
anything that depletes the native stock
! of vitality, and strict attention to those
things which shall secure for such a
child not only the conserving of this
native stock of vitality, but the in
| crease of this reserve fund to the ut
most limit.
Paramount in this line are the two
requisites of quiet and open air life
Putting these two requisites together
you will see that such ways of getting
the open air as drives and excursions
are not allowable to any great extent
| noise and excitement accompanies it,
OF course the summer season offers
the greatest opportunity to realize and
materialize these things in all their
| primal beauty and quality
Seeing the causes of the fraility of
children are multifarious. some being
inherited, while others are acquired, it
| is always worth while to have such in
VeStigation into each case as is possible
with view to the ascertaining of the
true cause, and hence any special
needs of the case in hand.
AS strength comes exercise may be
gradually increased.
Suitable food supply is another i'm
portant feature of the successful man
agement of these children, and should
consist of easily digested things, being
largely milk and cereals with meat
broths, eggs and fish.
AS to exercise, nothing can surpass
digging and delving in the lap of old
Mother Earth, who holds fully as many
treasures for the children as for the
grown people.
On dry soil when the weather is
not damp, full freedom may be allowed
the child to sit and bask in the sun
shlne or roll on the salubrious earth.
If the child gets sleepy the attendant
Slouiu nave Inlck rug or blanket on
which it may lie to rest or browse.
Walks through pleasant woodland
with its balsamic air, or on the sands
Of sunny shore, are congeniaI to our
purpose.
As rule, children whose lives are
hlled with excitement have not the en-
durance of those whose lives are more
monotonous, these latter accommodating
more nerve force, while the former de-
plete the stock of vital energy they al
ready possess. Whether their lives are
to be useful or negative in the world
depends on whether they possess much
or little nerve force.
10 not only hold the inherent stock
OF this, but to get more, should be the
great desideratum with the growing
enid, and to do it the growth should
sufTer few and small Interruptions.
Frall bodies generously endowed with
nerve force will make better engines
than stout ones with an insuficiencv
OF II. l believe l have written on this
SUBJECT before, but it is one on which
TOO much of the right sort cannot he
sald.-Dr. A. P. Reed, in Ladies' World