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"Medical Advice on the Bodily and Mental Health of Children" (1794)

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85. What ought we further particularly to observe with respect to children?
That children be suffered to exercise their bodies and minds in company with each other in the open air.

(Observation. Parents ought not only to be present at the exercises and amusements of their children, and guard them from all dangers and injuries, but they ought also to encourage them, and lead them to all that is good and becoming, by their own virtuous example.)

86. Ought female children to receive the same education as boys in their infancy.
Yes; that they may at a future period enjoy the blessings of perfect health as well as men. (Observation. The most pernicious consequences to the rising generation flow from separating female children, at the earliest period of their existence, from male children; from dressing them in a different manner, preventing them from taking the same kind of exercise, and compelling them to lead a more sedentary life.)

87. What are the consequences of preventing children from taking the necessary exercises before the ninth year?
Their growth is impeded, and they remain weak and sickly for life.

88. What effect will it have upon children if they are kept to too hard work before the twelfth year?
They will very soon grow stiff, and old before their time.


VI. Of Clothes to be worn by Children from the beginning of the Third to the End of the Seventh or Eighth Year [ . . . ]

102. How ought children’s garments to be arranged?
So as not to impede the free and easy motions of the body, or prevent the access of the fresh strengthening air to it; they, therefore, ought to be free, wide, and open.

103. What further is requisite for this dress?
It ought to be simple, clean, light, cool, cheap, and easy to put on or take off; it ought to be different in every respect from that of older or grown-up persons.

104. What other reason is there for making this distinction between the dress of children and grown up persons?
To induce children to live with less restraint and greater happiness in the society of each other; [ . . . ] to check the too early ebullitions of that pride which leads children to ape the customs and actions of grown-up persons; [ . . . ]

105. How, and of what materials, ought children’s garments to be made?
A child ought to wear a wide linen frock, white, with blue stripes, having wide short sleeves, and a shirt of the same form. [ . . . ]



Source of English translation: Bernhard Christoph Faust, Catechism of health: For the Use of Schools, and for Domestic Instruction. Translated by J. H. Basse. London: C. Dilly, in the Poultry, 1794, pp. 23-41.

Source of original German text: Bernhard Christoph Faust, Gesundheits-Katechismus zum Gebrauche in den Schulen und beim häuslichen Unterrichte [Health Catechism for Use in Schools and for Domestic Instruction]. Bückeburg, 1794, pp. 17-28.

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