p. 12 | Danger in Kissing Babies

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Nov 8, 1906

Danger in Kissing Babies

Many Diseases Contracted by Infants Through Osculation

“I NEVER kiss a baby on the mouth. It is criminal,” says a woman physician in one of the women’s hospitals in New York.

“I know of no more injurious thing than the kissing of a baby’s mouth,” she declares, “for from experience I know that many diseases are transmitted to little ones by their parents or others touching their lips.

“A mother should guard her infants just as closely from kisses as from measles or whooping-cough. Though grown persons do not, as a rule, have any of the diseases to which children are susceptible, and so do not give them to the little ones, such as they frequently have are chronic, and for that reason much worse if contracted through the breath by young babies.

“I had one case where a newly born child died as the result of a kiss. It was only a few days old when a nurse caring for the mother kissed it on the lips, and the next day she developed scarlet fever. I took every precaution to prevent the little one from coming down with the same disease, but to no purpose, for it had a most severe attack, and died in less

than a week from the time its lips were kissed.

“I always advise mothers against allowing their little ones to be kissed on the lips, even by their parents and immediate family. A baby’s mouth should not be kissed, I contend, and if this rule were strictly followed, there would be fewer sick infants, for microbes would not then be transmitted to them. I warn against any kind of caress on the face, head, or hands.

“In fact, I believe that young children should be shown all possible tenderness, but not kissed and caressed. They do not understand it, and frequently I have seen them made most uncomfortable by being squeezed close in a mother’s arms and half smothered by kisses on the lips.

“Grown persons do not often realize how hard they are pressing the little body in their arms until the infants cry out in pain, and then they frighten the youngsters by suddenly kissing them all over the face in an effort to show how sorry they are because the little one cried. I wish I could make mothers, fathers, and nurses realize that they can best show their love for a young baby by touching it as little as possible.”