PROPER care of the skin of the newborn child, during its stay in
the hospital nursery and after it reaches home, is an important
problem in infant pediatrics. That there is little unanimity of
opinion regarding such care seems largely due to a lack of
understanding of the physiology and pharmacodynamics of the skin
of the newborn and to the difficulty of apportioning the
influence of nursing technic on conclusions otherwise reached.
Like other organs of the newborn, the skin differs from that of
the adult both histologically and physiologically in many
fundamental respects. The child's skin (after the vernix caseosa
has been removed) is pink, soft and silken to the touch and
exquisitely delicate in texture. Potter and Abel1 reported that
few babies display surface sterility at birth, the majority
showing contamination, principally with Staphylococcus albus and
Escherichia coli. After twelve to twenty-four hours, the skin
becomes hyperemic,