why you shouldn't bathe the baby in ice water, and other helpful hints.

A few days ago, I picked up the book The Mechanical Baby at the library. It's more or less just a review of the history of theories and practices on child rearing. Interestingly enough, before the days when most people were literate, almost all childcare literature was written in the form of prose--to make it easier to memorize and then pass from person to person. In the 1500's, it was apparently a very common practice amongst the Germans to take a newborn baby and give it a bath in ice water--the theory being that this would "harden it to the cold". In 1584, a man named Schevole de St. Marthe wrote this poem regarding the practice, basically saying that you shouldn't bathe your baby in ice water.........because it will kill the baby. It's oddly humorous, really...but awfully sad to think of how many babies were lost to such a dumb idea. "The Germans use, a race inured to cold, To war, to labor from the cradle bred.... The new-born child, yet reeking from the womb, They took to what oft gave him to the tomb; Lest he should from his father's strength decline, They plunged him shivering in the freezing Rhine... And taught him thus, from childhood, to defy The cold and frost of an inclement sky, The force of dreary winters to despise...." "The Germans grown more wise, as more refined, And doomed, no more, to ignorance of mind, For ages have their barberous cure despised And all condemn what their rude sires devised A method how superior! learning gave, To bathe the infant in the tepid wave."