CHILDHOOD FROM A MEDICAL STANDPOINT. 723 



nourished, not necessarily underfed, stock rather than from the 

 superabundant vitality of robust natures. The cultured mother 

 rarely has sufficient vigor to nurse her infant, and it is brought 

 up on some substitute, which at the best is but a makeshift. 

 Whatever modern life and culture may have done for our women, 

 they hardly seem, in their extreme forms, to have prepared them 

 for the intelligent care of their offspring, whose arrival is often 

 regarded with pathetic helplessness. There is, however, enough 

 of New England's " inflamed moral sense " in our midst to furnish 

 our women with a fair share of conscience, so that their errors 

 are as apt to be due to over-solicitude as the reverse. Take 

 the matter of clothing, for example : this is frequently piled on 

 till the hapless youngster presents the appearance of a bale 

 of millinery, impeding movements, keeping the child over- 

 heated, and forming a conspicuous part of the hot-house life 

 which the child is henceforth to lead. Literally " hot-house," for 

 there is something in our houses, their heating apparatus, or the 

 habits of the people, which keeps our residences at a tropical heat 

 during the cold season. I am inclined to think it is partly a 

 result of our high-pressure life. A tired brain and exhausted 

 nerves crave warmth ; and indolent or sedentary habits do not 

 predispose one to bear a bracing temperature. Be that as it may, 

 the little ones grow up in an atmosphere of steady, relaxing 

 warmth, and the continual endeavor is to protect them from any- 

 thing approaching cold. Their baths are usually hot, and there 

 is a noticeable absence of that skin culture which comes naturally 

 to country children, living out of doors, sleeping in a cold room, 

 skating or snow-balling in winter, and swimming in the neigh- 

 boring pond in summer. It seems that the whole tendency of city 

 life is toward "making it easy," physically, for the individual 

 by the elimination of all except the simplest demands on the 

 organism, forgetting that our powers are developed by their cul- 

 tivation, and inevitably deteriorate with disuse. Our life is so 

 artificial that we require gymnasiums, field-sports, and outings to 

 keep a decent physical equilibrium, and we ought in addition to 

 give particular attention to vascular gymnastics and to the culture 

 and development of the unstriped muscular fibers, which play so 

 fundamental a part in vital economy, by placing more dependence 

 on their adjustive and resisting powers, through a systematic and 

 judicious exposure of the skin to cold water, cold air, and the 

 vicissitudes of weather. As to the diet of children after the 

 nursing age, it is likely that our city children fare better than 

 many of their country cousins. There is probably no country in 

 the world where there is such an attractive variety of cheap and 

 wholesome food of all classes, meats, cereals, vegetables and fruit, 

 as in our own. The general habit of fruit-eating, which seems to 



