160 POTTING CHILDREN TO BED. 



HOW TO SECURE HEALTH-PRESERVING BEDS. 



One-third of your life time is spent in bed, and if that place is so 

 conditioned as to cause sickness or disturbances in the body which will 

 cause severe pain, rheumatic, neuralgic, etc., it is high time this were 

 known and corrected. 



The bed should be placed in a corner room or room having windows 

 on two sides so as to secure perfect and free ventilation. The head of 

 the bed should point to the north to secure the benefit of the magnetic 

 currents that flow from the pole towards the equator. 



The mattress should be of hair or of fresh straw, often renewed, 01 

 of excelsior. Feather mattresses are the worst. Feather covers are 

 always dangerous, and if used should be thin and light weight. 

 Heavy comforters are abominations and should be banished from civil- 

 ized communities. All beds should be wide, the wider the better, 

 especially if two occupy the same bed. On vacating the bed in the 

 morning the covers should be thrown back and allowed to air for 

 several hours, the longer the better. To make up the bed soon after it 

 is vacated is to hold in its folds the poisonous gases that exuded from 

 the body of the sleeper, and which are sure to contaminate the body 

 of whoever next sleeps in that bed. Particles of putrid matter in the 

 shape of gases have been known to lurk in such a bed for months. It 

 need scarcely be added that strict cleanliness is absolutely necessary in 

 order to keep the bed in a healthful condition. 



PUTTING CHILDREN TO BED PROPERLY. 



Foot Bath. The first care of the mother should be to see that 

 the child has a foot bath every night in warm weather and every 

 second night or third night at other times. No woman who neglects 

 this simple duty has a right to assume the rearing of a child. If the 

 habit of the daily bath is formed from infancy it will seldom, if ever, 

 be departed from in after life. Its value to the individual cannot be 

 estimated in dollars and cents. Physiologists prove that it is more 

 essential to keep the feet, especially the bottoms, clean than even the 

 face. 



Admit Pure and Expel Foul Air. The next duty of the 

 mother is to see that the windows are so arranged that one will admit 

 fresh air all the time and another let out foul air. The bugbear of 

 draught has laid the seeds of many a disease. It is a notorious fact 

 that invalids camping out and sleeping out of doors and in the draft of 

 a tent seldom or never take cold. 



About the Covering. Heavy bed covering should never go 

 on a child's bed (or any one's bed). Thin single blankets or spreads, 

 increased in number as the weather requires, are infinitely more health 

 ful. Thick comforters are almost certain to prove too warm during 

 the night and to be thrown or kicked off, resulting in a cold or coug* 



