Hygiene
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people. The infant lungs suffer and become diseased by inhaling
the atmosphere of a room poisoned by the tobacco user’s tainted
breath. Many infants are poisoned beyond remedy by sleeping in beds
with their tobacco-using fathers. By inhaling the poisonous tobacco
effluvium, which is thrown from the lungs and the pores of the skin,
the system of the infant is filled with the poison. While it acts upon
some as a slow poison, and affects the brain, heart, liver, and lungs,
and they waste away and fade gradually, upon others it has a more
direct influence, causing spasms, fits, paralysis, palsy, and sudden
death.—
How to Live, 68
.
Dress of the Infant
631. The garments are made extravagantly long, and in order to
keep them up on the infant, its body is girded with tight bands, or
waists, which hinder the free action of the heart and lungs. Infants
are compelled to bear a needless weight because of the length of their
garments, and thus clothed, they do not have free use of their muscles
and limbs. Mothers have thought it necessary to compress the bodies
of their infant children to keep them in shape, as if fearful that without
tight bandages they would fall in pieces or become deformed. Do
the animal creation become deformed because nature is left to do her
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own work? Do the little lambs become deformed because they are
not girded about with bands to give them shape? They are delicately
and beautifully formed. Human infants are the most perfect, and
yet the most helpless, of all the Creator’s handiwork, and therefore
their mothers should be instructed in regard to physical laws, so as to
be capable of rearing them with physical, mental, and moral health.
Mothers, nature has given our infants forms which need no girts or
bands to perfect them. God has supplied them with bones and muscles
sufficient for their support, and to guard nature’s fine machinery within,
before committing it to your care. The dress of the infant should be so
arranged that its body will not be in the least compressed after taking a
full meal.... Another great cause of mortality among infants and youth,
is the custom of leaving their arms and shoulders naked. This fashion
cannot be too severely censured. It has cost the lives of thousands.
The air, bathing the arms and limbs and circulating about the armpits,
chills these sensitive portions of the body so near the vitals, hinders