Another great cause of mortality among infants and youth, is the custom of leaving their arms and shoulders naked. This fashion cannot be too severely censured. It has cost the life of thousands. The air, bathing the arms and limbs, and circulating about the armpits, chills these sensitive portions of the body, so near the vitals, and hinders the healthy circulation of the blood, and induces disease, especially of the lungs and brain. Those who regard the health of their children of more value than the foolish flattery of visitors, or the admiration of strangers, will ever clothe the shoulders and arms of their tender infants. The mother’s attention has been frequently called to the purple arms and hands of her child, and she has been cautioned in regard to this health and the life-destroying practice; and the answer has often been, “I always dress my children in this manner. They get used to it. I cannot endure to see the arms of infants covered. It looks old-fashioned.” These mothers dress their delicate infants as they would not venture to dress themselves. They know that if their own arms were exposed without a covering, they would shiver with chilliness. Can infants of a tender age endure this process of hardening without receiving injury? Some children may have at birth so strong constitutions that they can endure such abuse without its costing them life; yet thousands are sacrificed, and tens of thousands have the foundation laid for a short, invalid life, by the custom of bandaging and surfeiting the body with much clothing, while the arms—which are at such distance from the seat of life, and for that cause need even more clothing than the chest and lungs—are left naked. Can mothers expect to have quiet and healthy infants, who thus treat them? (2SM 467.1) MC VC

When the limbs and arms are chilled, the blood is driven from these parts to the lungs and head. The circulation is impeded, and nature’s fine machinery does not move harmoniously. The system of the infant is deranged, and it cries and mourns because of the abuse it is compelled to suffer. The mother feeds it, thinking it must be hungry, when food only increases its suffering. Tight bands and an overloaded stomach do not agree. It has no room to breathe. It may scream, struggle and pant for breath, and yet the mother not mistrust the cause. She could relieve the sufferer at once, at least of tight bandages, if she understood the nature of the case. She at length becomes alarmed, and thinks her child really ill, and summons a doctor, who looks gravely upon the infant a few moments and then deals out poisonous medicines, or something called a soothing cordial, which the mother, faithful to directions, pours down the throat of the abused infant. If it was not diseased in reality before, it is after this process. It suffers now from drug-disease, the most stubborn and incurable of all diseases. If it recovers, it must bear about more or less in its system the effects of that poisonous drug, and it is liable to spasms, heart disease, dropsy on the brain, or consumption. Some infants are not strong enough to bear even a trifle of drug-poisons, and as nature rallies to meet the intruder, the vital forces of the tender infant are too severely taxed, and death ends the scene. (2SM 468.1) MC VC

It is no strange sight in this age of the world, to view the mother lingering around the cradle of her suffering, dying infant, her heart torn with anguish, as she listens to its feeble wail, and witnesses its expiring struggles. It seems mysterious to her, that God should thus afflict her innocent child. She does not think that her wrong course has brought about the sad result. She just as surely destroyed her infant’s hold on life as though she had given it poison. Disease never comes without a cause. The way is first prepared, and disease invited by disregarding the laws of health. God does not take pleasure in the sufferings and death of little children. He commits them to parents, for them to educate physically, mentally and morally, and train them for usefulness here, and for Heaven at last. (2SM 468.2) MC VC