WHY SO MANY CHILDREN DIE

It is a startling fact that very few people are fit to be parents. Every summer we are rendered melancholy by the record of the sad havoc death makes among our little ones. These deaths are mainly attributed to heat. This is only an indirect cause of the great mortality among our children. They do not get out of doors to exercise enough, particularly in the winter time. The system of keeping them muffled up beside red hot stoves, in apartments through which a breath of fresh air never passes, during the cold season, predisposes them to disease, and the moment the weather changes and becomes oppressive they sicken and die. Children are also permitted to eat abundance of candies, cakes, nuts and other trash, which should never find access to their stomachs; and many parents allow their very young offspring the use of tea and coffee. These indulgences create a morbid state of the system, which eventually produces severe sickness, and unless the constitution be particularly robust, and the medical treatment especially skilful, death winds up the affair conclusively. Children are not taught the value of frequent ablution. With enervated nerves, foul stomachs, and pores stopped up by impure exhalations, children cannot expect to thrive when the dog star rages.