Good Health by Editor

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Aug 28, 1879

Good Health.

By Editor

Bathing the Baby.

IN various "exchanges," one now sees a short article on the care of infants, which says, among other things, that babies should be washed in cold water twice a day, and oftener in hot weather This article was probably written by some masculine writer, who knows extremely little about babies, and it is seized upon by male editors, and put into their household columns as a very wise bit of advice for ignorant mothers. But few mothers are so ignorant as to take such advice. Instinct teaches them better. A well dressed and well fed baby needs a full bath only two or three times a week in cold weather, and only once a day in warm weather.

Warm baths are weakening, and cold baths make too great a demand on the constitutional vigor, and are always injurious, unless there is pleasure in them, and a quick and complete reaction or warm glow of the skin. The water used should be neither cold, nor decidedly warm, but comfortably cool or even luke-warm. Try it by your elbow to see whether it is too warm or too cool. The article mentioned says nothing about the conditions under which a bath should be taken, but it should never be immediately following a meal, or when the child is cold, unless it be a warm bath used as a medicine. No matter if the little one is in a perspiration when the bath is given, if neither the room nor the water chills it. —Agriculturist.