Before going into details as to what I consider the most healthy mode of clothing children, I wish to urge the total abolition of what Prof. Humphry calls "a sort of baptism to the numerous evils of fashion in dress," to which the vast majority of infants are subjected, viz. the binder, or swather. I cannot do better than quote Prof. Humphry's words on the subject from his address at the Congress of the Sanitary Institute of Great Britain:1[1]— "Those mischievous two yards of calico . . . con-constrict and hinder the expansion of that very region of the body where heart and lungs, stomach and liver . . . are struggling for room to grow and do their work." It hampers the breathing, and may even occasion rupture by preventing due expansion of the chest when the child coughs. It interferes with digestion, and when the stomach is distended with food, causes pain by its unyielding pressure. Dr. Humphry continues :—" A more pernicious device can hardly be conceived than this relic of ancient nursedom, and it is impossible to estimate the number of deformed or pigeon-chests, of hampered stomachs, livers, lungs, and hearts, with their varied attendant life-enduring infirmities and curtailment of life that must result from the use of these 'swathers,' as they are called, for which there is not the slightest necessity."
Binders are a relic of the ancient custom of swaddling infants, which arose from a sort of superstition that infants required to be artificially pressed
- ↑ 1 Held at Glasgow from Sept. 25th to 29th, 1883. See the "Sanitary Record," for October, p. 151.
