Shelton, Herbert
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!1 HOME PAGE HEALTH LIBRARY CATALOG " " THE HYGIENIC CARE OF CHILDREN by HERBERT M. SHELTON D. P., D. N. T., D. N. Sc. AUTHOR OF Human Life, It's Philosophy and Laws; Food and Feeding; Living Life to Live it Longer; Fundamentals of Nature Cure; The Regeneration of Life; Natural Cure of Syphilis; Natural Cure of Tuberculosis; Tonsils and Adenoids; The Natural Cure of Cancer; The Natural Cure of Hay Fever and Asthma; The Natural Cure of Diabetes and Bright's Disease; Serum Poisoning, A Medical Crime; The Menace of Vaccines and Serums; Orthotrophy--The Natural Diet of Man; The Scourges of Man; Associate Editor of How to Live and The Progressive Health Builder; Founder and Editor of Wholesome Living; Former Columnist in the New York Evening Graphic; Former Staff Writer for Physical Culture; Contributor to Many !2 Health Magazines and Founder and Director of Dr. Shelton's Health School; President of the International School of Orthopathy. Published by DR. SHELTON'S HEALTH SCHOOL San Antonio, Texas. Copyright 1931 by the Author. INDEX OF CHAPTERS Introduction I Disease--two views II The Slaughter of The Innocents III Prenatal Care IV Babies Should be Born in the Spring V Baby's Growth and Development VI The Child's Teeth VII Teething VIII Fat Babies IX Mother's Milk X Should Baby be Weaned XI Three Year Nursing Period XII Cows Milk XIII Pasteurization XIV Three Feedings a Day XV No Starch for Infants XVI "ReguIar" Crimes in Feeding XVII Feeding of Infants XVIII Baby's General Care !3 XIX Feeding Children from two to six years XX A Healthy Child XXI Undernutrition XXII The Acute "Infectious" Diseases of Childhood XXIII Skin Disorders XXIV Common Disorders of Infants and Children XXV Child Education XXVI Corporal Punishment XVII Vaccinia XXVIII Serum Poisoning XXIX Commercial Medicine HOME PAGE HEALTH LIBRARY CATALOG " " " " " " " " " " " " INTRODUCTION " An intelligent man may be wrong sometimes, but a fool is always right. He is never wrong. The medical profession is never wrong. It never changes, except superficially. " !4 This is the reason it is necessary for me to write this book. There are many books on the care and feeding of infants, but most of them consist largely of repetitions of ancient mistakes. There is little in them that can be recommended to the parent who desires to care for his or her child in the best manner possible. They are full of statements which have been known to be false for many years. But the medical profession is never wrong. " I constantly see children who are cared for as advised by these books or by the ex-purts who wrote them, or by the doctors who follow these ex- spurts, and I can't work up a great deal of enthusiasm over the results of such care. Indeed, as a rule, to which there are some exceptions, those children who are most under the care of specialists are the ones who suffer most. " It will be said that they are under the care of the specialists because of their sufferings; but I am convinced, from over ten years of careful observations, that their sufferings are largely the result of being under the care and misguidance of the specialist. " The greatest charge I bring against the medical profession, one that outranks the charges of ignorance and commercialism, is that it is artificial and unnatural in almost everything that it does. It is a huge system of anti naturalism, based on ignorance and bolstered up by law and commercialism. " In its dealings with children it is estranged from nature and children are suffering because of this. Its scheme of so-called "immunization" is as unnatural as anything can possibly be. This scheme has been appropriately called a "world of biological make-believe." But it would not be so bad if we could stop there. There are two sides to biology--health and disease. Serums and vaccines possess none of the elements of childhood fancy when viewed from the pathological side. Each and every one of them are pathogenic and their devastating influence upon child life is difficult to over estimate. We find babies adjudged 100% perfect in baby contests denied first prize, and given a place inferior to less perfect children, because they have not been vaccinated, have not been made sick, have not been scarred and marred. It is criminal. " Medicine's feeding scheme disregards nature to an astonishing degree. It is a complex and anti-natural affair which all too often completely !5 overlooks the physiological needs of the child and which almost constantly disregards the chemistry of digestion. " One can only register pain when he sees the great emphasis which they place upon cow's milk in the diet of the child and greater pain when he finds them to be determined that no child shall ever receive milk from a healthy and properly nourished cow. " As I write these lines there lays here on my desk a copy of the Golden Age, for April 16, 1930. In it I find these words: "Dr. Morris Fishbein, of the American Medical Journal, has been addressing the Nebraska Millers Association on the value of white bread." " Dr. Fishbein is the official mouthpiece of the American Medical Association and, while it may be true, as is often stated, that there are some members of this association, who disapprove of him and his reactionism and bigotry, it is true that they remain silent and continue to aid in paying his salary. " Be this as it may, the fact is that the great mass of physicians, including almost 100% of the child specialists, are still feeding white flour products and denatured cereal products to children of all ages, even to infants. Many of these defend white flour and disparage whole wheat. Many other denatured products are advocated and employed by physicians in feeding children. " Their opposition to sun-bathing is being slowly broken down. But it has required nearly a hundred years to accomplish this. At this writing, however, there are still many physicians who regard sun-bathing as a silly and harmful fad. Others think the sun-bath may possess some virtue but they never advise it and go on day after day just as though it has no value. " Of the other so-called schools of healing, I need say very little. Physio- medicalism and homeopathy are all but dead. Eclecticism is little if any in advance of the allopaths, while its members are few. " Chiropractic has nothing to offer in child care except spinal examination and adjustment. The same is true of Naprapathy. Osteopathy follows the allopathic medical program very closely. The new thought people and Christian scientists have nothing of their own to offer. The Naturopaths, !6 physcultopaths and natural therapists, all of which are really one, have the most to offer, of all the schools, in the care of children, but even these mix in too much of the artificial and unnatural. " When we consider the sick child, we find medicine to be equally as unnatural and artificial, but more destructive, than in her feeding and general care of the semi-healthy child. Poisonous drugs, filthy, putrid serums, septic vaccines, surgery, over-feeding and the same denatured diet mentioned above make up their armamentarium. " When one considers the abuse that parents and physicians heap upon children, it causes him to marvel, not that so many children die, but that so few die. For, he soon sees that the child enters a conflict against sinister foes the day it is born, even granting that it has not been. forced to fight with them before birth. " There is nothing in this world more beautiful and lovely than a healthy, well developed, happy and contented child. Nothing elicits our sympathy and compassion so quickly and so abundantly as a suffering child. The freshness and joyousness of healthy childhood, the purity and loveliness of their minds and hearts, the frankness and candour of their little souls is the admiration of the whole world. Small wonder that Jesus declared that unless one become like unto a little child he cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven. " We can have a nation of healthy, happy well-developed, lovely children when we become sufficiently interested in them to place their interest first and commercial interests last. Men are naturally strong and handsome; women are naturally beautiful and graceful. That we are a nation of animated cartoons and caricatures is evidence that there is much that is wrong with the conditions determining or influencing our development. " We can build a nation of super Venus’s and Apollos, with minds as well developed as their bodies and with splendid morals and lovely characters as soon as we as a nation, and as parents, develop sufficient interest in the welfare of our children, to prompt us to acquire and make use of the now available knowledge of how to care for them. " One of the greatest curses of child-life is parents and teachers and doctors. The ignorance and stubbornness and all around cussedness of !7 these deny the child all opportunity for normal physical, mental, moral and social development. These set bad examples before the child, force artificial conditions upon the child, impose their own wills upon it and train it in their own perversions. " The average parent can see no reason why his or her child should not be fed and clothed and cared for as he or she, or as all other children are fed and clothed and "cared" for. Like the average teacher, the average parent is bound, hand and foot, to the traditions of the past, the conventions of the present and to his or her own bad personal habits.