ssary nowhere else, it would be
indispensable in the application of this article. If she do not take
special pains to prevent it, the erring though well meaning nurse may
so compress the body with the bandage as to produce pain and uneasiness,
and sometimes severe colic. Nay, worse evils than even this have been
known to arise. When a child sneezes, or coughs, or cries, the abdomen
should naturally yield gently; but if it is so confined that it cannot
yield where the band is applied, it will yield in an unnatural
proportion below, to the great danger of producing a species of rupture,
no less troublesome than the one which such tight swathing is designed
to prevent.

But besides the bandage already mentioned, no other restraint of the
body and limbs of a child is at all admissible. The Creator has kindly
ordained that the human body and limbs, and especially its muscles, or
moving powers, shall be developed by exercise. Confine an arm or a leg,
even in a child of ten years of age, and the limb will not increase
either in strength or size as it otherwise would, because its muscles
are not exercised; and the fact is still more obvious in infancy.

There is a still deeper evil. On all the limbs are fixed two sets of
muscles; one to extend, the other to draw up or bend the limb. If you
keep a limb extended for a considerable time, you weaken the one set of
muscles; if you keep it bent, you weaken the other. This weakness may
become so great that the limb will be rendered useless. There are cases
on record--well authenticated--where children, by being obliged to sit
in one place on a hard floor, have been made cripples for life. Hundreds
of others are injured, though they may not become absolutely crippled.

I repeat it, therefore, their dress should be so free and loose that
they may use their little limbs, their neck and their bodies, as much as
they please; and in every desired direction. The practices of confining
their arms while they lie down, for fear they should scratch themselves
with their nails, and of pinning the clothes round their feet, are
therefore highly reprehensible. Better that they should even
occasionally scratch themselves with their nails, than that they should
be made the victims of injurious restraint. Who would think of tying up
or muffling the young lamb or kid? And even the young plant--what think
you would be the effect, if its leaves and branches could not move
gently with the soft breezes? W