Bran for Babies.

Cromwell Argus, Volume I, Issue 8, 29 December 1869, Page 2

Bran for Babies.

—o— Everybody knows that dolls arc stuffed with sawdust, but that real babies should bo packed and preserved in bran is probably now to most people j and yet the practice is not—if we may express ourselves in the sorry pun which suggests itself—a bran new one. On the contrary, it has been tried long enough to have enabled one lady to bring up a family of live children, all of whom were lodged in cradles Idled with bran, in which they slept away the unconscious sleep of infancy. Some years ago, a doctor residing in a French village not far from Paris—a M. Bourgeois, of Crepyen, Valois- - took it into his head that the cleanest, healthiest, and best way of managing infants was to discard all the clothing peculiar to their age in favour of brm, in which material they were to be deposit ed for the night or whenever they sleep. It was not long before he succeeded in finding an adventurous matron willing to try his method ; and now this theory has, we arc assured, become so fashionable that the doctor Is unable to meet all the demands made upon his time in order to instruct young mothers in the process, and so he Ims constructed some little models affording a practical view of his plan. As we have recently chatted with a clever French lady who has had personal experience in the process, and is not a little enthusiastic about it, a few practical details may bo interesting. A hair pillow is put in, and then the bran is moved aside with the hands until a hollow is formed the size of a child’s body. The infant, divested of everything below the waist, and having a little bodice or cape above that, is then placed in the bran, and its body completely covered with it, exactly as may be scon at the seaside at the present time, where children play at burying one another in the sand. A light coverlet or counterpane is finally placed above all, and baby is in bed for the night. The method is pursued from almost as soon as infants are born until they are eight or ten months old. In answer to our inquiries as to whether they did not kick their legs out of the bran, whether it was not uncleanly, and liable to become wet, and how far it was capable of being adapted to the varying temperatures of season, &c., we were assured that the children did not do the first, unless the weather was very hot, and the coverlet was sufficient; and the two great advantages connected with bran were its particular cleanliness, and the very equable and pleasant, temperature which it maintained around the infant’s body. Bran speedily absorbs fluids brought in contact with it, and the moist portions get covered with the dry, so as not to become cold or unpleasant to the child’s skin. In the morning, when the infant is taken out, all the soiled bran is easily removed, and replaced by fresh—an entirely new supply being required about once a fortnight. The liability to irritation and other affections of the skin, so common to infants where the strictest attention to cleanliness is not maintained, is said to I>o unknown.

Such arc the advantages to be derived from packing babies in bran, as related to us, and the statements of fact were corroborated by others. The suggestion is a plausible one, but wo.have no evidence of its working. It is certainly very primitive and simple, and such as we can fancy might have been conceived and practised by prehistoric man,'and not by fashionable ladies of this age, close to the great capital of France. —The Lancet.