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Selected Messages Book 2
that of her offspring. When she should be enjoying pleasant exercise,
she is often bent over work which severely taxes eyes and nerves. And
it is often difficult to arouse the mother to her solemn obligations to
cherish her own strength, for her own good, as well as that of the child.
Show and fashion are the demon altar upon which many American
women sacrifice their children. The mother places upon the little
morsel of humanity the fashionable dresses which she had spent weeks
in making, which are wholly unfit for its use, if health is to be regarded
of any account. The garments are made extravagantly long, and in
order to keep them upon the infant, its body is girted with tight bands,
or waists, which hinder the free action of the heart and lungs. Infants
are also 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 though 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
own work? Do the little lambs become deformed because they are
not girted 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 your 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 the least compressed after taking a full meal. Dressing infants in a
fashionable manner, to be introduced into company for visitors to ad-
mire, is very injurious to them. Their clothing is ingeniously arranged
to make the child miserably uncomfortable, and it is frequently made
still more uneasy by passing from one to the other, being fondled by
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all. But there is an evil greater than those already named. The infant is
exposed to a vitiated air, caused by many breaths, some of which are
very offensive and injurious to the strong lungs of older people. The
infant lungs suffer, and become diseased by inhaling the atmosphere