988 The Cornell Reading-Courses 



unless these have caused actual bodily harm to her and to the growing 

 child, or have so seriously interfered with her nutrition as to affect the 

 food supply of the child. In other words, the prenatal bugaboo has been 

 routed. 



THE BABY 



The newborn baby receives and deserves our sympathy. All at once 

 it is called upon to face new and very strange surroundings, to exercise 

 recently developed functions, to adjust itself to a new set of conditions. 

 A new food supply has to be digested by a previously untried digestive 

 apparatus ; a new way of taking oxygen begins through lungs never before 

 called into play; previously circumscribed limbs are now free and must 

 be exercised; and often, worst of all, it is faced by a large acquaintance 

 of persons as ignorant of it and its real needs as it is of them. Its educa- 

 tion now begins. A pathetic little figure, we must agree ! 



Our great ignorance of the growth and development of the human 

 organism during the nine months it lies so snugly hidden away makes us 

 feel that an unoridgable chasm separates the child which is bom from 

 the child before it is bom. This very fact leads to much of our ignorant 

 management of the small baby. In the few moments or hours which are 

 occupied in accomplishing the entrance of the child into the outside world, 

 there has not been time for it materially to change its needs. It has been 

 accustomed to uninterrupted quiet, to a sightless, possibly a soundless, 

 and a certainly monotonous period of existence in which to accomplish a 

 most wonderful gro\\i:h and development. Its food has been supplied 

 automatically, and under normal conditions satisfactorily. When it is 

 bom it is just an immature and undeveloped bit of humanity ready to 

 use the newly developed functions, ready to be educated and trained to 

 use others, but not ready to share largely the lives of the more completely 

 developed. It still needs and should have something approximating as 

 closely as possible the previous environment but which will be consistent 

 with its new responsibilities of digesting its own food, getting rid of its 

 own wastes, taking in its own oxygen, wearing clothes to supply its need 

 of warmth, learning little by little to move its muscles, to correlate its 

 actions and to adjust itself to other human beings. 



Training the baby. — What the newborn baby is we know. What it is 

 to be will depend about equally on two factors, inheritance and environ- 

 ment. A good inheritance may be marred by a bad environment, but 

 the reverse is also true, for a poor inheritance may be in part overcome 

 by careful training. It is a fatal mistake to think that education begins 

 with school years. It begins with the first breath the child draws, and 

 the education or training of the infant is as important in determining its 



