PEDIATRICS Vol. 68 No. 3 September 1981, pp. 353
This Article
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow P3Rs: Submit a response
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me when P3Rs are posted
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow E-mail this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My File Cabinet
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrow reprints & permissions
Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via CrossRef
Right arrow Citing Articles via Google Scholar
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by C., T. E.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
PubMed
Right arrow Articles by C., T. E., Jr

ON THE PROPER TREATMENT OF INFANTS ACCORDING TO DAVID RAMSAY OF SOUTH CAROLINA (1790)

T. E. C. Jr MD

David Ramsay (1749-1815), a pupil of Benjamin Rush, was a Revolutionary patriot and statesman, historian, and practitioner. In 1790, in a dissertation which he read before the Medical Society of South Carolina, he offered the following suggestions to those caring for infants.

The foundation of good health through life, should be laid in a proper treatment of infants. Their limbs should be unconfined, and frequently rubbed. Their food ought to be plain and simple. They should be constantly clean, and never suffered to remain wet for any length of time. Caps should be laid aside after the third or fourth month in winter, and much sooner in summer. Shoes and stockings may well be dispensed with through the whole period of infancy. Every prudent exertion should be early made for hardening the constitution against sudden changes of the atmosphere. To this end exercise should be freely and daily taken in the open air. When the weather turns suddenly cold, some additional clothing may be proper; but it is often more for the interest of children to habituate them to all the differences of our weather, and even to expose them to occasional colds, than by an excess of care and tenderness to induce a delicacy of habit....

In nursing cradles are hurtful. They add much to the heat of the infants who are confined between their narrow sides. A hard mattress is much cooler and on many accounts preferable. The youths who are accustomed to sleep on the floor with bare blankets will pass through life with more independence and with greater advantages than they who are accustomed to the relaxing indulgencies of soft beds....