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

If the mother remains in ignorance in regard to the physical wants of her child, and, as the result, her child sickens, she need not expect that God will work a miracle to counteract her agency in making it sick. Thousands of infants have died who might have lived. They are martyrs to their parent’s ignorance of the relation which food, dress and the air they breathe, sustain to health and life. Mothers in past ages, should have been physicians to their own children. The time she devoted to the extra beautifying of her infant’s wardrobe, she should have spent in a nobler purpose—in educating her mind with regard to her own physical wants, and that of her offspring. She should have been storing her mind with useful knowledge, in regard to the best course she could pursue in rearing her children healthfully, with the view that generations would be injured or benefited, by her course of action. (2SM 469.1) MC VC

Mothers who have troublesome, fretful infants, should study into the cause of their uneasiness. By so doing, they will often see that something is wrong in their management. It is often the case, that the mother becomes alarmed by the symptoms of illness manifested by her child, and hurriedly summons a physician, when the infant’s sufferings would have been relieved by taking off its tight clothing, and putting upon it garments properly loose and short, that it may use its feet and limbs. Mothers should study from cause to effect. If the child has taken cold, it is generally owing to the wrong management of the mother. If she covers its head, as well as its body while sleeping, in a short time it will be in a perspiration, caused by labored breathing, because of the lack of pure, vital air. When she takes it from beneath the covering, it is almost sure to take cold. The arms being naked, exposes the infant to constant cold, and congestion of lungs or brain. These exposures prepare the way for the infant to become sickly and dwarfed. (2SM 469.2) MC VC

Parents are accountable in a great degree, for the physical health of their children. Those children who survive the abuses of their infancy, are not out of danger in their childhood. Their parents still pursue a wrong course toward them. Their limbs, as well as their arms, are left almost naked. Those who value fashion above health, place hoops upon their children. Hoops are not convenient, modest or healthful. They prevent the clothing from falling close about the body. Mothers then dress the upper part of their limbs with muslin pantalettes, which reach about to the knee, while the lower part of their limbs are covered with only one thickness of flannel or cotton, while their feet are dressed with thin-soled gaiter boots. Their garments being kept from the body by hoops, it is impossible for them to receive sufficient warmth from their clothing, and their limbs are continually bathed in cold air. The extremities are chilled, and the heart has thrown upon it double labor, to force the blood into these chilled extremities, and when the blood has performed its circuit through the body, and returned to the heart, it is not the same vigorous warm current which left it. It has been chilled in its passage through the limbs. The heart, weakened by too great labor, and poor circulation of poor blood, is then compelled to still greater exertion, to throw the blood to the extremities which are never as healthfully warm as other parts of the body. The heart fails in its efforts, and the limbs become habitually cold; and the blood, which is chilled away from the extremities, is thrown back upon the lungs and brain, and inflammation and congestion of the lungs or the brain is the result. (2SM 469.3) MC VC