From 
Physical Culture for Babies (1904) by Margueritte & Bernarr Macfadden.
A product of the “physical culture” movement of the 19th and early 20th century–essentially a modern-style fitness movement–Physical Culture for Babies applies the dictates of physical culture to childhood development, with the result being children like the on the left.
I was prepared to mock this book, but most of what’s in there is not controversial by today’s standards, and as one who’s been exercising his baby boy since birth (with the result that Henry could do, at 2 1/2, what Gladys Martin is doing in the photo) I’m not in any position to mock. We can smirk at some of the statements–the “don’t use combs” thing, for example–but I actually agree with a lot of what’s in here.
For example, here’s a list of common beliefs, circa 1904, about children (the author is debunking them):
That baby from birth must be swaddled in as many garments as possible….
That rooms through which the air is circulating are highly dangerous to baby’s health….
That a baby will grow strong and vigorous even if it be rarely taken outside of the house.
That so-called baby foods are just as good as the food which Nature intended for the infant….
That “soothing syrups” and like poisonous compounds are harmless and really do the work which their proprietors foolishly or mendaciously claim they can accomplish.
Okay, Internets, mock me for being a loon. Go ahead. I don’t care.
Yay! You liked my favorite google book! It’s truly amazing how we keep reinventing the wheel vis a vis parenting and when people come out and state truths they’re considered the lunatics. I just read that the APA has come out with a new recommendation that mothers nurse their babies as a health measure rather than a “lifestyle choice”. They’ve been trying to tell people that forever. The poor Virgin probably had people tell her to keep Jesus in the house all day and feed him syrups.
omg not nursing NOOOOO
Just read a really interesting paper on medicine and divination in the late Roman Empire, and how precursors to germ theory had to deal with the same issues as bird-watching future-tellers: translating something not immediately evident into action items.
Completely OT, I watched Cowboys and Aliens and it wasn’t as bad as I expected it to be, but there’s a moment that reminded me forcefully of you, where our benighted Westerner townsmen are attacked and they don’t know what to call the aliens so they call them demons.
Now the story is set in 1873, apparently (though that wasn’t obvious to me as a viewer), and I found myself wondering: were they already writing alien invasion stories back on the East Coast right at that moment? The film-makers assume the characters won’t jump to Martian fiction because they’re the ones mashing up the genres, dammit, but just how far away is that moment when demon becomes interplanetarian?