Medical inquiries and observations (Volume 1-2).

  • Rush, Benjamin, 1746-1813.
Date:
1819
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Medical inquiries and observations (Volume 1-2). Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    luider circumstances still more unfavourable to it: an in- stance of which is related by Mr. Bruce. After a journey of several hundred miles across the sands of Nubia, he came to a spring of water shaded by a few scrubby trees» Here he intended to have rested during the night, but he had not slept long before he was awakened by a noise which he perceived was made by a solitary Arab, equally fatigued and half famished with himself, who w^as preparing to murder and plunder him. Mr. Bruce rushed upon him, and made him his prisoner. The next morning he w^as joined by a half-starved female companion, with an infant of six months old in her arms. In passing by this child, Mr. Bruce says, it laughed and crowed in his face, and attempted to leap upon him. From this fact it would seem as if laughing was not only characteristic of our species, but that it was early and intimately connected with human life. The child of these Arabs had probably never seen a smile upon the faces of its ferocious parents and perhaps had never (before the sight of Mr. Bruce) beheld any other hu- man creature. Crying has a considerable influence upon health and life in children. I have seen so many instances of its salutary effects, that I have sitisfied myself it is as possible for a child to cry and be fat, as it is to laugh and be fat. 4. As children advance in life, the constancy of their appetites for food, and their disposition to laugh and cry, lessen, but the diminution of these stimuli is supplied by exercise. The limbs* and tongues of children are always in motion. They continue likewise to eat oftener than adults. A crust of bread is commonly the last thing they ask for at night, and the first thing they call for in the morning. It is now they begin to feel the energy of their mental faculties. This stimulus is assisted in its force by the disposition to pratde, which is so universal among children. This habit of converting their ideas into words as fast as they rise, follows them to their beds, where we * Niebuhr, in his travels, says the children in Arabia are taught to keep themselvts constantly in motion by a kind of vibratory exercise of their bo- dies. This motion counteracts the the diminution of life produced by the heat of the climate d Arabia.