ent to secure
the infant from falling out, but not of such a structure as to hinder,
in any degree, a free circulation of the air.

The reasons why a child ought to sleep alone, and not with the mother or
nurse, are numerous; but the following are the principal;

1. The heat accumulated by the bodies of the mother and child both, is
often too great for health.

2. The air is too impure. I have already spoken of the change in the
purity of the air which is produced by breathing in it. It is bad
enough for two adults to sleep in the same bed, breathing over and over
again the impure air, as they must do more or less, even if the bed is
very large;--but it is still worse for infants. Their lungs demand
atmospheric air in its utmost purity; and if denied it, they must
eventually suffer.

3. But besides the change of the air by breathing, the surface of the
body is perpetually changing it in the same manner, as was stated in the
chapter on Ventilation. Now a child will almost inevitably breathe a
stream of this bad air, as it issues from the bed; and what is still
worse, it is very apt, in spite of every precaution, to get its head
covered up with the clothes, where it can hardly breathe anything else.
This, if frequently repeated, is slow but certain death;--as much so as
if the child were to drink poison in moderate quantities.

Let me not be told that this is an exaggeration; that thousands of
mothers make it a point to cover up the beads of their infants; and that
notwithstanding this, they are as healthy as the infants of their
neighbors. I have not said that they would droop and die while infants.
The fumes of lead, which is a certain poison, may be inhaled, and yet
the child or adult who inhales them may live on, in tolerable health,
for many years. But suffer he must, in the end, in spite of every effort
and every hope. So must the child, whose head is covered habitually
with the bed clothing, where it is compelled to breathe not only the air
spoiled by its own skin, but also that which is spoiled by the much
larger surface of body of the mother or nurse.

But I have proof on this subject. Friedlander, in his "Physical
Education," says expressly, that in Great Britain alone, between the
years 1686 and 1800, no less than 40,000 children died in consequence of
this practice of allowing them to sleep near their nurses. I was at
first disposed to doubt the accuracy of this most remarkable statement.
But when I con