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    [Illustration: A GOOD SPORT FOR GIRLS AND BOYS]



THE WOODS HUTCHINSON HEALTH SERIES



THE CHILD'S DAY


BY


WOODS HUTCHINSON, A.M., M.D.


Sometime Professor of Anatomy, University of Iowa; Professor of
Comparative Pathology and Methods of Science Teaching, University of
Buffalo; Lecturer, London Medical Graduates' College and University of
London; and State Health Officer of Oregon. Author of "Preventable
Diseases," "Conquest of Consumption," "Instinct and Health," and "A
Handbook of Health."



HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
BOSTON   NEW YORK    CHICAGO


COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY WOODS HUTCHINSON




FOREWORD


"If youth only knew, if old age only could!" lamented the philosopher.
What is the use, say some, of putting ideas about disease into
children's heads and making them fussy about their health and anxious
before their time?

Precisely because ideas about disease are far less hurtful than
disease itself, and because the period for richest returns from
sensible living is childhood--and the earlier the better.

It is abundantly worth while to teach a child how to protect his
health and build up his strength; too many of us only begin to take
thought of our health when it is too late to do us much good. Almost
everything is possible in childhood. The heaviest life handicaps can
be fed and played and trained out of existence in a child. Even the
most rudimentary knowledge, the simplest and crudest of precautions,
in childhood may make all the difference between misery and happiness,
success and failure in life.

Our greatest asset for healthful living is that most of the unspoiled
instincts, the primitive likes and dislikes, of the child point in the
right direction. There is no need to tell children to eat, to play, to
sleep, to swim; all that is needed is to point out why they like to do
these things, where to stop, what risks to avoid. The simplest and
most natural method of doing this has seemed to be that of a sketch of
the usual course and activities of a Child's Day, with a running
commentary of explanation, and such outlines of our bodily structure
and needs as are required to make clear why such and such a course is
advisable and such another inadvisable. The greatest problem has been
how to reach and hold the interest of the child; and the lion's share
of such success as may have been achieved in this regard is due to the
cooeperation of my sister, Professor Mabel Hutchinson Douglas of
Whittier College, California.

THE AUTHOR.




CONTENTS


  GOOD MORNING
      I. Waking Up
     II. A Good Start
    III. Bathing and Brushing

  BREAKFAST

  GOING TO SCHOOL
      I. Getting Ready
     II. An Early Romp
    III. Fresh Air--Why We Need It
     IV. Fresh Air--How We Breathe It

  IN SCHOOL
       I. Bringing the Fresh Air In
      II. Hearing and Listening
     III. Seeing and Reading
      IV. A Drink of Water
       V. Little Cooks
      VI. Tasting and Smelling
     VII. Talking and Reciting
    VIII. Thinking and Answering

  "ABSENT TO-DAY?"
      I. Keeping Well
     II. Some Foes to Fight
    III. Protecting Our Friends

  WORK AND PLAY
      I. Growing Strong
     II. Accidents
    III. The City Beautiful

  THE EVENING MEAL

  A PLEASANT EVENING

  GOOD NIGHT
      I. Getting Ready for Bed
     II. The Land of Nod

  QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES




THE CHILD'S DAY




GOOD MORNING


I. WAKING UP

If there is anything that we all enjoy, it is waking up on a bright
spring morning and seeing the sunlight pouring into the room. You all
know the poem beginning,--

  "I remember, I remember
  The house where I was born;
  The little window where the sun
  Came peeping in at morn."

You are feeling fresh and rested and happy after your good night's
sleep and you are eager to be up and out among the birds and the
flowers.

You are perfectly right in being glad to say "Good morning" to the
sun, for he is one of the best friends you have. Doesn't he make the
flowers blossom, and the trees grow? And he makes the apples redden,
too, and the wheat-ears fill out, and the potatoes grow under the
ground, and the peas and beans and melons and strawberries and
raspberries above it. All these things that feed you and keep you
healthy are grown by the heat of the sun. So if it were not for the
sunlight we should all starve to death.

While sunlight is pouring down from the sun to the earth, it is
warming and cleaning the air, burning up any poisonous gases, or
germs, that may be in it. By heating the air, it starts it to rising.
If you will watch, you can see the air shimmering and rising from an
open field on a broiling summer day, or wavering and rushing upward
from a hot stove or an open register in winter. Hold a little feather
fluff or blow a puff of flour above a hot stove, and it will go
sailing up toward the ceiling. As the heated air rises, the cooler air
around rushes in to fill the place that it has left, and the outdoor
"drafts" are made that we call _winds_.

These winds keep the air moving about in all directions constantly,
like water in a boiling pot, and in this way keep it fresh and pure
and clean. If it were not for this, the air would become foul and damp
and stagnant, like the water in a ditch or marshy pool. So the Sun
God, as our ancestors in the Far East used to call him thousands of
years ago, not only gives us our food to eat, but keeps the air fit
for us to breathe.

In still another way the sun is one of our best friends; for his rays
have the wonderful power, not only of causing plants that supply us
with food--the Green Plants, as we call them--to grow and flourish,
but at the same time of withering and killing certain plants that do
us harm. These plants--the Colorless Plants, we may call them--are the
_molds_, the _fungi_, and the _bacteria_, or _germs_. You know how a
pair of boots put away in a dark, damp closet, or left down in the
cellar, will become covered all over with a coating of gray mold. Mold
grows rapidly in the dark. Just so, these other Colorless Plants,
which include most of our disease germs, grow and flourish in the
dark, and are killed by sunlight. That is why no house, or room, is
fit to live in, into which the sunlight does not pour freely sometime
during the day. The more sunlight you can bring into your bedrooms and
your playrooms and your schoolrooms, except during the heat of the day
in the summer time, the better they will be. The Italians have a very
shrewd and true old proverb about houses and light: "Where the
sunlight never comes, the doctor often does."

So you see that Nature is guiding you in the right direction when she
makes you love and delight in the bright, warm, golden sunlight; for
it is one of the very best friends that you have--indeed, you couldn't
possibly live without it.

In one sense, in fact, though this may be a little harder for you to
understand, you are sunlight yourselves; for the power in your muscles
and nerves that makes you able to jump and dance and sing and laugh
and breathe is the sunlight which you have eaten in bread and apples
and potatoes, and which the plants had drunk in through their leaves
in the long, sunny days of spring and summer.

So throw up your blinds and open your windows wide to the sunlight
every morning; and let the sunlight pour in all day long, except only
while you are reading or studying--when the dazzling light may hurt
your eyes--and for six or seven of the hottest hours of the day in
summer time. Perhaps your mothers will object that the sunlight will
fade the carpets, or spoil the furniture; but it will put far more
color into your faces than it will take out of the carpets. If you are
given the choice of a bedroom, choose a room that faces south or
southeast or southwest, never toward the north.


II. A GOOD START

When you are really awake and have had a good look to see what kind of
morning it is, you will feel like yawning and stretching, and rubbing
your eyes four or five times, before you jump out of bed; and it is a
good plan to take plenty of time to do this, unless you are already
late for breakfast or school. It starts your heart to beating and your
lungs to breathing faster; and it limbers your muscles, so that you
are ready for the harder work they must do as soon as you jump out of
bed and begin to walk about and bathe and dress and run and play.

When you jump out of bed, throw back the covers and turn them over the
foot of the bed, so that the air and the sunlight can get at every
part of them and make them clean and fresh and sweet to cover you at
night again. Though you may not know it, all night long, while you
have been asleep, your skin has been at work cleaning and purifying
your blood, pouring out gases and a watery vapor that we call
_perspiration_, or _sweat_; and these impurities have been caught by
the sheets and blankets. So after a bed has been slept in for four or
five nights, if it has not been thrown well open in the morning, it
begins to have a stuffy, foul, sourish smell. You can see from this
why it is a bad thing to sleep with your head under the bedclothes, as
people sometimes do, or even to pull the blankets up over your head,
because you are frightened at something or are afraid that your ears
will get cold. Your breath has poisonous gases in it, as well as your
perspiration; and the two together make the air under the bedclothes
very bad.

Now you are ready to wash and dress. But before you do this, it is a
good thing to take off your nightdress, or turn it down to your waist
and tie it there with the sleeves, and go through some good swinging
and "windmill" movements with your arms and shoulders and back.

(1) Swing your arms round and round like the sails of a windmill;
first both together, then one in one direction, and the other in the
other.

(2) Hold your arms straight out in front of you, and swing them
backward until the backs of your hands strike behind your back.

(3) Hold your arms straight out on each side, clench your fists, and
then smartly bend your elbows so that you almost strike yourself on
both shoulders, and repeat quickly twenty or thirty times.

(4) Swing your arms, out full length, across your chest five or ten
times.

(5) Swing forward and down with your arms stretched out, until the
tips of your fingers touch the floor.

(6) Set your feet a little apart, swing forward and downward again,
until your hands swing back between your ankles.

    [Illustration: STARTING THE DAY]

When you come back from these down-swings, bend just as far back as
you can without losing your balance, so that you put all the muscles
along the front of your body on the stretch; and then swing down again
between your ankles. This will help to tone up all your muscles, and
limber all your joints, and set your blood to circulating well, and
give you a good start for the day.


III. BATHING AND BRUSHING

Now you are ready to wash and dress. You can easily take off the gown,
or garments, that you have worn during the night; but there is one
coat that you cannot take off--one that is more important and useful
and beautiful than all the rest of your clothes put together, no
matter of how fine material they may be made, or what they have cost.

Do you remember the old Bible story about Joseph and his "coat of many
colors"? Perhaps you've wished you had one just as nice. Now, the fact
is, your coat is more beautiful even than Joseph's; and, as for its
uses, it is the most wonderful coat ever made!

This coat of yours changes its color from time to time; sometimes it
is pink, sometimes red, sometimes a soft milky white, and sometimes a
dull dark blue, or purple. I wonder if you guess what it is. Sometimes
it is dry and sometimes wet, sometimes it is hot and sometimes cold,
sometimes rough and sometimes smoother than the softest silk--just run
your hand gently over your cheek!

Now you have guessed my riddle. This "wonderful coat" is your skin,
which covers you from top to toe. It fits more closely than any glove,
and yet is so easy and comfortable that it never rubs or binds or
hurts you in any way.

    [Illustration: THE SKIN-STRAINER

    The little pores open in furrows of the skin. This drawing is
    many hundred times as large as the piece of skin itself.]

Will the wonderful coat wash? Yes, indeed, and look all the prettier.
In fact, to keep it white and clear you must bathe often, not only
your hands and face, but your whole body. Your skin is a strainer, you
know. It is a "way out" for some of the gases and waste water from the
blood. What will happen, then, if you don't wash your skin? The little
holes, or _pores_, that the sweat comes through may become clogged.
The strainer won't let the poison out, and so it will stay inside your
body. Then, too, if you do not wash the skin, the little scales that
are peeling off the outside coat will not be cleared away. You have
noticed them, haven't you, sometime when you were pulling off black
stockings? You found little white pieces, almost as fine as powder,
clinging to the inside of the stockings. These little scales are
always rubbing off from your skin.

So every morning it is good to splash the cool water all over
yourself, if you can, as the birds do in the puddles. You don't need a
bathtub for this, though of course it is much pleasanter and more
convenient if you have one. Pour the water into a basin and splash it
with your hands all over your face, neck, chest, and arms. Then rub
your skin well with a rough towel. Next, place the basin on the floor;
put your feet into it and dash the water as quickly as you can over
your legs. Then take another good rub. But you must not do this unless
you keep warm while you are doing it, and your skin must be pink when
you have finished. If you are chilly after rubbing, you should use
tepid, even very hot, water for your morning bath. In summer you can
bathe all over easily; but in winter, unless your room is warm, it is
enough to splash the upper half of your body. Once or twice a week you
should take a good hot bath with soap and then sponge down in cool
water. See how the birds enjoy their bath; and you will, too, if you
once get into the habit of bathing regularly.

Now let us take a good look at this coat and see if we can find out
what it is like.

The other day I saw some boys playing basketball. They wore short
sleeves and short trousers. Four were Indians, and five were white
boys, and one was a <DW64>. The skin of the white boys seemed to shine,
it looked so white; and the <DW64>'s shone in its blackness; but the
Indian's looked a dull rich dusky brown.

Yes, you say, they belong to different races.

But what causes the difference in their color?

Little specks of coloring matter, or _pigment_, which lie in the outer
layer of the skin. Even white skins contain a little pigment, they are
not a pure white. A Chinaman's skin has a little more of this pigment,
so that it looks yellow; an Indian's has still more; and a <DW64>'s has
most of all, making him black.

Sunlight can increase the amount of pigment in the skin. The people
who live in the torrid zone have much darker skins than those who live
where the days are short and cold. You have noticed, yourself, that
when you expose the skin of your face or arms to the hot sun, you
become freckled, or tanned. This tanning, or browning, of the outer
layer of the skin protects the more delicate coats of skin below from
being scorched or injured by the strong light.

When you are playing and running with your schoolmates, you see that
their faces grow very red, and even their hands. Why is this? Because
the heart has been pumping hard and has sent the red blood out toward
the skin. The red color shines through the outer part of the skin. The
pigment in the Indian's skin, or the <DW64>'s, prevents the red blood
underneath from shining through, as it does through yours.

    [Illustration: THE PARTS OF THE SKIN

    The pore P on the surface of the skin is the end of a tube
    through which sweat flows out. At O are the oil sacs that feed
    the hair H. At B are the little blood vessels that make the skin
    look pink.]

The skin, you see, is made up of different layers. When you burn
yourself, you can see a layer of skin stand out like a blister. It is
white; but if the blister is broken, underneath you see the coat that
is full of tiny blood vessels, so tiny and so close together that this
whole coat looks red. The skin, like every other part of the body, is
made up of tiny animal cells. In the outer coat they become quite flat
like little scales and then wear off; and their places are taken by
the newer cells that are