ablution, the first thing necessary is to apply a bandage round the abdomen, for the purpose of preventing the protrusion of the umbilical cord, or navel-string. Here, in the very commencement, a serious error is frequently committed, a strong inelastic substance being tightly placed round the delicate body of the child, and a degree of pressure made on that part, regardless of the infant's previous state of existence. The bandage is also often made so broad as to press considerably on the ribs, and therefore, even at this early period, to contract the chest; the nurse rarely considering that the sole object of this investment is the prevention of umbilical protrusion, and that therefore pressure on that particular region is all that is necessary. The newly-born child does not at first respire so much by means of the muscles of the chest, as by the action of the diaphragm, and any undue tightness of a bandage round the abdomen must therefore be extremely injurious.
All the clothes provided for the advent of the little stranger are made entirely on a false principle, and calculated to produce a baleful influence on its future development. In the first place the nurse is particularly anxious that its little fat and mottled neck and shoulders should be exposed to the
