The medical guide, for the use of the clergy, heads of families, and seminaries, and junior practitioners in medicine. Comprising a complete modern dispensatory, and a practical treatise on the distinguishing symptoms, causes, prevention, cure, and palliation of the diseases incident to the human frame, with the latest discoveries in the different departments of the healing art / by Richard Reece.

  • Reece, Richard, 1775-1831.
Date:
1833
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The medical guide, for the use of the clergy, heads of families, and seminaries, and junior practitioners in medicine. Comprising a complete modern dispensatory, and a practical treatise on the distinguishing symptoms, causes, prevention, cure, and palliation of the diseases incident to the human frame, with the latest discoveries in the different departments of the healing art / by Richard Reece. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    in their place; the latter of which, by confining and compressing the -brain, have no doubt been productive of very serious mischief to that organ, and by keeping up irritation in it, may often produce that formidable disease commonly called Watery Head. Shoes and stockings are likewise unnecessary incum- brances; the latter keep the legs wet and dirty, if they are not changed two or three times a day, and the former too often cramp and hurt the feet, so as to prevent the child learning to walk. Children in this simple dress would be perfectly easy, and enjoy the free use of their limbs* and faculties. They should be put into as soon as they are born, and continued in it till they are three years old, when it may be left off for any other more genteel and fashionable. They ought to be changed at least every day, to keep them free from sourness, which is prejudicial to the tender state of infancy. The night-dress should be only a loose flannel shirt, and less in quantity than that which is worn during the day, otherwise the child will be very liable to be affected with cold and complaints of the bowels. — Tape should be used instead of pins in putting on their napkins. Or THE FEEDING oF CuILpREN. — In the feeding of children, great care should be taken that their food be wholesome and good, and that it be given in such quantity only as the body requires for its support and growth. In the business of nursing, as in physic, we should endeavour to follow the dictates of nature. When a child is born, it is full of blood and excrement; and it requires some intermediate time of abstinence and rest to com- pose and recover it from the effects of the pressure it may have sustained in the birth; as well as the slight fever arising from the revolutions it undergoes after delivery. If the child has sus- tained no injury, it will soon fall into a sound sleep: of six or seven hours, when it will awake refreshed and hungry. It should then be put to suck +; if there be no milk, the sucking of the * The unnatural custom of confining the limbs of a child during night cannot be too much reprobated or guarded against by parents: a simple con- trivance to confine the hands, in order to prevent. the child from. rubbing or scratching its eyes, is often necessary ; but the confinement of the legs should on no account be allowed. + Ifthe nipples of the mother be short, which is generally the case with the first child, they should be first drawn out by the nurse; and in case of being tender, it will be proper to wash them with a little brandy instead of the poi- sonous preparation of lead, recommended by quacks and officious nurses. If the mother has small, tender, or ulcerated nipples, the prepared nipples (the teats of calves) will enable her to give suck with great comfort. I have, in many instances, found them to answer when the mother, through ulceration or total deficiency of nipple, could not otherwise have suckled her infant, The ease and advantages they afford are so very considerable and important, that it is much to be regretted that they are not better known to the faculty.