ast relief. At last a tumor was discovered by the attending physician,
near one of the bones on which we sit, and a needle was extracted two
inches long. The needle had been put in its clothes, and, by slipping
into the folds of the skin, had insinuated itself, unperceived, into the
child's body. It is pleasing to add, that, although the little sufferer
had now been ill seven or eight months, and had endured almost
everything but death,--fever, diarrhoea, and the most excruciating
pain,--it soon recovered.

This shocking circumstance is enough, one would think, to deter every
mother or nurse, who becomes acquainted with it, from using needles in
infants' clothes. Happy would it be, if, in banishing needles, they
would contrive to banish pins also, and adopt either the plan of Dr.
Dewees, or one still more rational.

SEC. 9. _Remaining Wet._

On the subject of changing the wet clothing of a child, there is a
strange and monstrous error abroad; which is, that by suffering them to
remain wet and cold, we harden the constitution. The filthiness of this
practice is enough to condemn it, were there nothing else to be said
against it.

It is insisted on by many, I know, that as water which is salt, when it
is applied to the skin, and suffered to remain long, while it secures
the point of hardening the child, prevents all possibility of its taking
cold, it hence follows, that wet diapers are not injurious. But this is
a mistake. Every time an infant is allowed to remain wet, we not only
endanger its taking cold, but expose it to excoriations of the skin, if
not to serious and dangerous inflammation. In short, if frequent changes
are not made, whatever some mothers and nurses may think, they may rest
assured, that the health of the child must sooner or later suffer as the
consequence.

Nor is it enough to hang up a diaper by the fire, and, as soon as it is
dry, apply it again. It should be clean, as well as dry. Let us not be
told, that it is troublesome to wash so often. Everything is in a
certain sense troublesome. Everything in this world, which is worth
having, is the result of toil. Nothing but absolute poverty affords the
shadow of an excuse for neglecting anything which will promote the
health, or even the comfort of the tender infant.

Of the impropriety and danger of suffering wet clothes to dry upon us, I
shall speak elsewhere; as well as of the evil of suffering children to
remain dirty,--their skins or their