Some Thoughts Concerning Education
§ 1. A sound mind in a sound body: this is a brief but complete description of a happy life in this world. Whoever has both has little else to wish for, and whoever lacks either will find that everything else counts for very little. Most of human happiness and misery is of our own making. A person whose mind doesn't guide him wisely will never find the right path, and one whose body is weak and broken will never be able to travel it. I'll grant that some people are born with such vigorous constitutions, both mental and physical, that they need little help from anyone else. The strength of their natural gifts carries them toward excellence almost from birth, and their fortunate makeup allows them to accomplish remarkable things. But such people are rare. I think it's fair to say that, of all the men we encounter, nine out of ten are what they are, good or bad, useful or not, because of their education. That is what creates the great divide among human beings. The small, almost imperceptible impressions made on us in early childhood carry consequences that are profound and lasting. It is with childhood as it is with the headwaters of certain rivers: a gentle touch of the hand can redirect the soft, yielding current into channels that send it flowing in entirely opposite directions. That small guidance given at the source determines where the water will eventually go, carrying it at last to places far apart and utterly different from one another.
§ 2. I think of children's minds as just as easily shaped as water itself, and while the mind is the most important part and deserves our greatest attention, the body that houses it shouldn't be neglected. I'll therefore start with that outer vessel and consider the health of the body first. That may well be what you expect from me, given the field of study I'm most closely associated with, and it's also the part I can deal with most quickly, since it can, if I'm not mistaken, be covered in fairly short order.
§ 3. How essential good health is to everything we hope to accomplish, and how much a strong, resilient constitution matters to anyone who wants to make something of themselves in this world, is too self-evident to require argument.
§ 4. My concern here with health is not what a physician should do for a sick or ailing child, but what parents can do on their own, without medicine, to preserve and strengthen a healthy constitution in their children (or at least prevent a weak one from getting worse). This could perhaps be summed up in a single rule: gentlemen should raise their children the way honest farmers and solid yeomen raise theirs. But since mothers may find that a bit too blunt, and fathers may find it too brief, I will explain myself in more detail. I will say this much as a general observation for women especially to take to heart: most children's constitutions are either ruined, or at least weakened, by excessive coddling and overprotection.
§ 5. The first thing to attend to is making sure children are not dressed or covered too warmly, whether in winter or summer. At birth, the face is no less delicate than any other part of the body; it is habit alone that toughens it and makes it capable of bearing the cold. The Scythian philosopher made exactly this point in his memorable reply to the Athenian who marveled at how he could go naked in frost and snow. "How," asked the Scythian, "can you bear to have your face exposed to the bitter winter air?" "My face is used to it," said the Athenian. "Think of me as all face," the Scythian replied. Our bodies can endure almost anything they have been accustomed to from the start.
Here is a striking example of this principle, though it illustrates the opposite extreme of heat rather than cold. I include it to show what habit can accomplish, and I'll quote the author directly, as I found it in a recent and perceptive travel account: "The heat in Malta," he writes, "is more intense than anywhere else in Europe. It surpasses even Rome, and is thoroughly suffocating, made worse by the fact that cooling breezes are rare. This turns the common people as dark as gypsies, yet the peasants simply ignore the sun. They work through the hottest part of the day without stopping or seeking any shade from its scorching rays. This has convinced me that human nature can adapt to many things that seem impossible, as long as we accustom ourselves to them from infancy. The Maltese do exactly this: they toughen their children's bodies and acclimatize them to the heat by letting them go completely naked, without a shirt, trousers, or anything on their heads, from birth until they are ten years old."
Allow me, then, to advise you not to guard too anxiously against the cold of our English climate. There are people in England who wear the same clothes in winter and summer alike, and they do so without any discomfort or greater sensitivity to cold than anyone else. But if the mother insists on making allowances for frost and snow out of concern for the child's health, and the father goes along with it out of fear of criticism, at least make sure the winter clothing is not too heavy. Among other considerations, keep this in mind: once nature has covered the child's head with a good growth of hair and a year or two of age has strengthened it enough that he can run about outdoors during the day without a cap, it is best that he also sleep without one at night. Nothing more reliably invites headaches, colds, catarrh, coughs, and a range of other ailments than keeping the head too warm.
§ 6. I have used he here because my primary focus is on how a young gentleman should be raised from infancy. This approach won't translate perfectly to the education of daughters in every respect, though wherever differences of sex call for different treatment, the distinction will be easy enough to make.
§ 7. I would also recommend washing his feet every day in cold water, and having his shoes made thin enough to let water in whenever he walks near it. I expect this will put both the mistress of the house and the maids against me. One will find it too unpleasant, and the other will likely object to the extra work of cleaning his stockings. Even so, the truth is that his health is worth far more than any such inconvenience, ten times over and then some. Anyone who considers how dangerous and even fatal it can be for a pampered child to get his feet wet will wish he had grown up like the children of the poor, going barefoot. Through that habit, those children become so accustomed to wet feet that it does them no more harm than wet hands would. And what accounts for this difference between hands and feet in other people? Nothing but habit. I have no doubt that if a man had gone barefoot from the cradle while his hands were always kept wrapped in warm mittens and gloves (what the Dutch call hand shoes), that habit would make wet hands just as dangerous to him as wet feet currently are to so many others. The way to prevent this problem is to have his shoes made so they let in water, and to wash his feet in cold water every single day. This practice is worth recommending for cleanliness alone, but my real aim is health. I therefore don't insist on any particular time of day for it. I have seen it done every night with excellent results, carried through the entire winter without missing a single night, even in bitter cold. When thick ice covered the water, the child still bathed his legs and feet in it, even though he was too young to rub and dry them himself, and when he first began the practice he was frail and delicate. But since the main purpose is to toughen those parts through regular, repeated exposure to cold water, and thereby prevent the harm that typically follows when children raised more gently happen to get their feet wet, I think it can be left to the good judgment and convenience of the parents whether to do it morning or night. The timing matters little to me, so long as it is done consistently. The health and resilience it produces would be worth paying a much higher price. Add to that the prevention of corns, which for some men would be a very welcome benefit. Begin in the spring, however, starting with lukewarm water and making it a little colder each time until within a few days you reach fully cold water, then continue at that temperature through winter and summer alike. It should be noted here, as with all departures from our ordinary habits, that changes must be made gradually and almost imperceptibly. Done that way, we can accustom our bodies to almost anything, without pain and without risk.
How fond mothers are likely to receive this advice is not hard to predict. What could it seem like to them but murdering their tender babies, to treat them this way? Put their feet in cold water during frost and snow, when everything you can do is barely enough to keep them warm! To ease these fears a little, let me offer some examples, since plain reason alone is rarely enough to persuade anyone. Seneca tells us, in his letters (53 and 83), that he used to bathe in cold spring water in the middle of winter. He would hardly have done this, given his considerable wealth that could easily have covered the cost of a warm bath, and given his age (for he was old by then, which would have excused far greater comfort-seeking), unless he had found it not only bearable but genuinely good for his health. If we think his Stoic principles drove him to this discipline, fine; perhaps that philosophy reconciled him to cold water. But what made it agreeable to his health? Because his health was not harmed by this demanding practice. And what do we say about Horace, who never armed himself with the reputation of any philosophical school, and least of all sought out Stoic austerities? Yet he assures us that he was in the habit of bathing in cold water during the winter season. Perhaps someone will argue that Italy is much warmer than England, and that the chill of Italian rivers cannot compare to ours in winter. But if the rivers of Italy are warmer, those of Germany and Poland are considerably colder than any river in this country, and yet Jewish men and women bathe fully in them at every season of the year, without any harm to their health. And not everyone is inclined to believe it is a miracle, or some special virtue of St. Winifred's Well, that keeps the cold waters of that famous spring from harming the tender bodies that bathe in it. Everyone today is well aware of the remarkable recoveries that cold baths have produced in weakened and failing constitutions, restoring health and strength; and so cold bathing cannot be impractical or unbearable as a means of strengthening and toughening the bodies of those who are already in reasonably good health.
Cold water bathing is further supported by historical and contemporary examples. If the cases of grown men still seem too extreme for children, who might be considered too fragile for such treatment, consider what the ancient Germans and the Irish of today do with their infants. Even the youngest children can safely bathe not just their feet but their entire bodies in cold water without any harm. There are women in the Scottish Highlands today who follow this practice with their children in the middle of winter, and they find that cold water causes no injury, even when there is ice in it.
§ 8. I need not say much here about swimming, once a boy is old enough to learn and has someone to teach him. It is a skill that has saved countless lives, and the Romans considered it so essential that they placed it alongside reading and writing. Their common way of describing someone poorly educated and useless was to say he had learned neither to read nor to swim. Beyond the practical value of a skill that may one day save his life, the health benefits of frequent cold-water bathing during the summer heat are so well established that little encouragement should be needed. The one precaution worth observing is this: he should never enter the water when exercise has recently warmed him or left any heightened pulse or agitation in his blood.
§ 9. Another thing that greatly benefits everyone's health, and especially children's, is spending plenty of time outdoors and as little time as possible by the fire, even in winter. This habit will also accustom a child to heat and cold, sun and rain; and if a person's body can't endure these conditions, he will be of very little use in this world. By the time he's grown, it's too late to start toughening him up: that process must begin early and proceed gradually. In this way, the body can be trained to bear almost anything. If I were to suggest letting a boy play in the wind and sun without a hat, I doubt it would be well received. A thousand objections would be raised, which would ultimately amount to nothing more than a fear of sunburn. And if the young master must always be kept in the shade, never exposed to sun and wind for fear of his complexion, that may be a fine way to raise a dandy, but not a man capable of serious work. As for daughters, I grant that their appearance deserves greater consideration; yet I will say plainly that the more time they spend outdoors, without undue harm to their complexions, the stronger and healthier they will be. The closer their upbringing comes to the physical hardships their brothers endure, the greater the benefit they will carry with them for the rest of their lives.
§ 10. As far as I can tell, playing outdoors carries only one real danger: that when a child is flushed and breathless from running around, he might sit or lie down on cold or damp ground. This, I will readily admit, along with drinking cold liquids while still overheated from exertion, sends more people to their graves, or to the edge of them, through fevers and other illnesses, than almost anything else I can name. These risks are easy enough to prevent while he is still young, since at that age he is rarely out of sight. If, throughout his childhood, he is consistently and firmly kept from sitting on the ground or drinking anything cold while he is hot, that habit of restraint will serve him well long after he is no longer under the watchful eye of a nurse or tutor. That is really all one can do in this situation. As children grow older, they must be given more freedom, and in a great many things they must be trusted to govern themselves, since you cannot keep a constant watch over them. The only lasting guard is the one you build inside them: sound principles and deeply ingrained habits. These are the best and most reliable safeguards, and therefore the ones most worth cultivating. Repeated warnings and rules, no matter how often they are drilled in, will never produce lasting results on their own, in this matter or any other, unless practice has turned them into genuine habit.
§ 11. Mentioning girls brings one important point to mind that I don't want to overlook: make sure your son's clothes are never made too tight, especially around the chest. Let nature shape the body as she sees fit. She does this work far better and more precisely than we ever could by interfering. If women were to shape their children's bodies in the womb the way they so often try to reshape them after birth, we would have just as few perfect children born as we have well-formed ones among those who are tightly laced or heavily tampered with. This thought should, I believe, give meddlesome people pause (I won't name ignorant nurses and corset-makers specifically) and discourage them from interfering in matters they don't understand. They should fear throwing nature off course in forming the body's parts, given that they have no idea how even the smallest and most insignificant of those parts is made. And yet I have seen so many cases of children seriously harmed by tight lacing that I can only conclude there are creatures besides monkeys who, scarcely wiser than those animals, destroy their own young through misguided affection and too much squeezing.
§ 12. Narrow chests, labored breathing, diseased lungs, and spinal deformities are the natural and nearly inevitable results of tight bodices and constricting clothing. The very methods used to create slender waists and elegant figures are precisely what destroy them. When the body's natural processes of nourishment and circulation are obstructed, disproportion among its parts is unavoidable. So it should surprise no one that when the body deposits what it cannot distribute freely, some part that isn't compressed ends up with a shoulder or hip that grows larger or higher than it should. It is widely known that women in China, pursuing some ideal of beauty I cannot quite fathom, bind their feet tightly from infancy, resulting in feet of remarkable smallness. I recently saw a pair of Chinese shoes said to belong to a grown woman; they were so wildly out of proportion to the feet of a woman the same age here that they would barely have fit one of our young girls. Beyond this, it is observed that Chinese women tend to be quite small in stature and short-lived, while the men are of ordinary height and live to a comparable age. Some attribute these deficiencies in the women of that country to the severe binding of their feet, which restricts the free circulation of the blood and undermines the growth and health of the entire body. We see this principle at work even in minor injuries: when a small part of the foot is damaged by a twist or a blow, the entire leg or thigh can lose its strength and nourishment and gradually waste away. How much greater the harm, then, when the chest cavity, which houses the heart and is the very seat of life, is unnaturally compressed and prevented from expanding as it should.
§ 13. His diet should be very plain and simple. If I were to advise, meat should be avoided as long as he is still in infant clothes, or at least until he is two or three years old. Whatever benefit this might offer to his present and future health and strength, I doubt most parents will agree to it, since they have been misled by their own habit of eating too much meat and will likely fear that their children are in danger of starving if they don't have meat at least twice a day. What I am certain of is this: children would cut their teeth with far less difficulty, suffer fewer illnesses while young, and build the foundation of a healthy and strong constitution far more reliably, if they were not stuffed as much as they are by doting mothers and foolish servants, and if they were kept entirely away from meat during the first three or four years of their lives.
But if the young master must have meat, let it be only once a day, and only one kind per meal. Plain beef, mutton, veal, and the like, with no sauce other than a good appetite, is best. Great care should also be taken that he eats plenty of bread, both on its own and alongside everything else. And whatever solid food he eats, make sure he chews it thoroughly. We English are often careless about this, and indigestion and other serious problems follow as a result.
§ 14. For breakfast and supper, milk, milk porridge, water gruel, flummery, and countless other dishes commonly made in England are perfectly suitable for children, with one condition: they should be plain, simply prepared, and seasoned with very little sugar, or ideally none at all. Spices like allspice, and anything else that might overheat the blood, should be carefully avoided. Go easy on salt as well, in all his meals, and don't accustom him to heavily seasoned food. Our palates develop a taste for whatever flavors we grow up with, and too much salt, beyond causing thirst and excessive drinking, does other real damage to the body. My own view is that a good piece of well-made, well-baked brown bread, sometimes with butter or cheese and sometimes without, would often be the best breakfast for a young boy. It is just as nourishing as fancier foods, will build him into just as strong a man, and if he grows up eating it, he will enjoy it just as much. If he asks for food between meals, give him nothing but plain dry bread. If he is genuinely hungry rather than simply restless, dry bread will do the job; and if he isn't truly hungry, he shouldn't be eating at all. This approach produces two real benefits: 1. Through habit, he will come to genuinely enjoy bread, because, as I said, our palates and stomachs both grow fond of what they are used to. The second benefit is that you won't be training him to eat more than nature requires, or more often than it calls for. I don't claim that everyone's appetite is the same; some people naturally have stronger stomachs, others weaker ones. But I do believe that many people become gluttons through habit rather than nature, and I have seen in various countries men who are just as vigorous and strong eating only two meals a day as others who have conditioned their stomachs, like alarm clocks, to demand four or five. The Romans typically fasted until supper, which was the only proper meal even for those who ate more than once a day. Those who did eat earlier in the morning, some at eight o'clock, some at ten, others at noon or later, ate no meat and had nothing formally prepared for them. Augustus, at the height of his power as the greatest ruler on earth, tells us he would take a bite of dry bread in his chariot. And Seneca, in his eighty-third letter, describing how he managed his diet even in old age when some indulgence might have been forgiven, says he would eat a piece of dry bread for his dinner without even sitting down to it, though his wealth could have paid for a far finer meal, had his health required it, as easily as any man in England, even if that man's fortune were doubled. The masters of the ancient world were raised on this spare diet, and the young men of Rome showed no lack of strength or spirit from eating only once a day. If it happened that someone could not hold out until supper, their one proper meal, he would take nothing more than a piece of dry bread, or at most a few raisins or something equally light, just enough to tide him over. This kind of dietary restraint was considered so essential, both for health and for the demands of public life, that the custom of eating only one main meal a day survived even the wave of luxury that flooded in with Rome's eastern conquests. Even those who had abandoned their old frugal habits and begun hosting feasts did not start them until evening. Sitting down to a full table before sunset was considered so excessive that it remained a mark of reproach well into the time of Caesar. For this reason, if it would not be thought too strict, I would judge it best for a young boy to have nothing but bread for breakfast as well. You cannot fully appreciate the power of habit, and I attribute a large share of the illness we see in England to our eating too much meat and far too little bread.
§ 15. When it comes to mealtimes, I think it's best to avoid locking a child into a rigid eating schedule, as much as circumstances allow. When habit fixes eating to set hours, the stomach begins to expect food at those times and grows irritable if they pass; it either works itself into a troublesome excess of hunger or sinks into a complete loss of appetite. For this reason, I would not keep a fixed hour for breakfast, dinner, or supper, but vary them almost every day. If the child wants to eat between these meals, let him have good dry bread as often as he asks for it. If anyone thinks this too sparse a diet for a child, consider that a child will never starve or waste away for lack of nourishment when he already has meat at dinner, soft food at supper, and good bread and beer available whenever he's hungry. On reflection, I think this is the best arrangement for children. The morning is generally set aside for study, and a full stomach is poor preparation for that. Dry bread, though the most nourishing food, is also the least tempting, and no one who cares about a child's mind or body would want him stuffed at breakfast, left dull and sluggish. Nor should anyone think this arrangement beneath a child of wealth and standing. A gentleman, in any era, should be raised fit to bear arms and serve as a soldier. A father who raises his son as though the boy were destined to sleep through life in the comfort of an inherited fortune has paid little attention to the examples history offers, or to the demands of the age he actually lives in.
§ 16. A child's drink should be nothing more than weak beer, and even that should never be permitted between meals unless he has first eaten a piece of bread. My reasons for saying this are as follows:
§ 17. 1. More fevers and cases of overindulgence come from people drinking while they are overheated than from almost anything else I can think of. So if a child gets hot and thirsty from playing, bread won't sit well with him; and if he can only have a drink on the condition that he eats first, he'll simply go without. If he's very hot, he should not drink at all. At the very least, eating a good piece of bread first will buy enough time to warm the beer to body temperature, at which point he can drink it safely. If he's very thirsty, the warmed drink will go down easily and quench his thirst more effectively; and if he refuses to drink it warm, going without won't do him any harm. Beyond that, this practice will teach him to hold back, which is a habit of enormous value for both physical and mental health.
§ 18. 2. Not allowing a child to drink without eating first will also prevent him from developing the habit of constantly reaching for a cup, which is a dangerous early step toward a life of heavy drinking. People often bring habitual hunger and thirst on themselves simply through routine. And if you care to test this, you can, even after a child has been weaned, condition him through repetition into such a need for drinking at night that he won't be able to sleep without it. Nurses use drink as a lullaby to quiet crying children, and mothers generally find it quite difficult to break their children of nighttime drinking once they bring them home. Trust me on this: habit is just as powerful during the day as it is at night, and if you choose to, you can condition almost anyone to feel thirsty every hour.
I once lived in a house where, to quiet a fussy child, they gave him something to drink every time he cried. He was constantly sipping, and though he couldn't yet speak, he drank more in a single day than I did. Try it yourself if you like: you can drink yourself into a persistent thirst just as easily with weak beer as with strong. The most important thing in education is which habits you establish, and so in this, as in everything else, never let a practice become routine unless you want it to continue and grow. It is good for both health and sobriety to drink no more than genuine thirst demands, and a person who avoids salty foods and strong drink will rarely feel thirsty between meals, unless he has been trained into the habit of drinking at odd hours.
§ 19. Above all, take great care that your child rarely, if ever, tastes wine or strong drink. Nothing is more commonly given to children in England, and nothing does them more harm. They should never drink anything strong except when they need it as a restorative and a doctor has prescribed it. This is where servants need to be watched most closely and corrected most firmly when they step out of line. People of that sort tend to place a great deal of their own happiness in strong drink, and they are always eager to win favor with the young master by offering him what they love most themselves. Finding that it makes them cheerful, they foolishly assume it can't hurt the child. You must keep a careful eye on this and check it with every bit of skill and persistence you have, because nothing lays a more reliable foundation for harm, both to body and mind, than children being given strong drink, and especially drinking it in private with the servants.
§ 20. Fruit is one of the trickiest areas to manage when it comes to children's health. Our first parents lost paradise over it, so it's no wonder children can't resist the temptation, even when it costs them their wellbeing. No single rule can cover this subject adequately, because I strongly disagree with those who would keep children almost entirely away from fruit on the grounds that it's unhealthy. That kind of strict approach only makes children more desperate for it, so that whenever they do get the chance, they eat everything in sight: good and bad, ripe or unripe, whatever they can get their hands on. Melons, peaches, most varieties of plums, and all kinds of grapes grown in England should, I think, be kept from children entirely. These fruits have an irresistible taste but a very unwholesome juice, and if it were possible, children should never even see them or know they exist. Strawberries, cherries, gooseberries, and currants, on the other hand, when fully ripe, can be allowed quite generously, provided they are eaten with a few sensible precautions. 1. Not after meals, as we typically eat them, when the stomach is already full. They should be eaten before meals or between them, and children should have them for breakfast. 2. Always eaten with bread. 3. Perfectly ripe. Eaten this way, I believe fruit does more good than harm. Summer fruits suit the hot season in which they ripen and refresh stomachs that are sluggish and worn down by the heat. For this reason, I would not be nearly as strict on this point as some parents are with their children. When children are kept on too tight a leash, instead of being allowed a reasonable amount of well-chosen fruit that would satisfy them, they seize every opportunity to get loose or bribe a servant to supply them, and end up gorging themselves on whatever rubbish they can find.
Apples and pears that are fully ripe and have been off the tree for some time can, I think, be eaten safely at any time and in fairly generous quantities. Apples especially have never harmed anyone, as far as I've heard, once October arrives.
Dried fruits with no added sugar are also quite wholesome, in my view. Sweetmeats of every kind, however, should be avoided. Whether they do more damage to the person who makes them or the person who eats them is hard to say. What I am certain of is that they represent one of the most wasteful indulgences that vanity has yet devised, and on that note I will leave the subject to the ladies.
§ 21. Of all the things that might seem soft or indulgent for children, sleep is the one area where they should be given their fill. This is the single domain where full satisfaction is not only permitted but encouraged, since nothing contributes more to a child's growth and health than adequate rest. The only thing worth regulating is which part of the day they sleep, and that question is easily answered: it is enormously beneficial to train children to rise early in the morning. Early rising is best for their health, and a person who has made a habit of it since childhood will not, as an adult, squander the best and most productive hours of his life in drowsiness and bed. If children are to be up early, it follows naturally that they must also go to bed early, which has the added benefit of keeping them away from the unhealthy and dangerous late-night hours when excess and disorder tend to flourish. Those who keep regular hours rarely fall into serious trouble. I am not suggesting that your son, once grown, should never stay out past eight or never linger over a glass of wine until midnight. What you are doing now, through the habits of his early years, is making those late-night temptations less appealing to him. It is no small advantage that, having found staying up late genuinely uncomfortable from long habit, he will often choose to avoid it and will rarely be the one to propose a midnight gathering. But even if the habit doesn't hold that firmly, and fashion and company eventually draw him into the lifestyle of other young men past twenty, it is still well worth cultivating early rising and early bedtimes in the years between now and then, for the immediate benefit of his health and the many other advantages it brings.
While young children should be allowed to sleep as much as they need, this generous allowance shouldn't continue indefinitely as they grow older. The right age to start limiting their sleep is impossible to pin down precisely, since it depends on each child's temperament, strength, and physical constitution. Somewhere between the ages of seven and fourteen, however, if a child has developed a habit of sleeping too long, it's reasonable to begin gradually reducing their sleep to around eight hours, which is generally sufficient for a healthy adult. If you've made a habit, as you should, of having the child rise early every morning, the problem of oversleeping will largely correct itself. Most children will actually push to stay up later with the household in the evenings, which naturally shortens their time in bed. The danger, though, is that if no one is watching, they'll simply make up for the lost nighttime hours by sleeping later in the morning, and this should not be allowed. They should be called and made to rise at their usual early hour without exception. That said, great care must be taken in how you wake them. Never do it abruptly, and never with a loud or sharp voice or any sudden startling noise. This kind of rude awakening genuinely frightens children and can cause real harm. Even for adults, being jolted out of deep sleep is unsettling enough. When waking a child, always begin with a soft call and a gentle touch, drawing them gradually out of sleep, and speak only kindly to them until they are fully alert, completely dressed, and clearly awake. Being pulled from sleep, however gently it's done, is already uncomfortable enough on its own. There's no reason to add to that discomfort, and certainly no reason to add anything that might frighten them.
§ 22. Let his bed be firm, and use quilts rather than feathers. A hard sleeping surface strengthens the body, while being buried in feathers every night softens and weakens it, often causing poor health and an early death. Beyond kidney stones, which frequently trace their origin to keeping the lower back wrapped in warmth, many other ailments, and the root cause of them all, a frail and delicate constitution, can be blamed largely on feather beds. Moreover, a boy accustomed to sleeping on a firm surface at home won't lie awake for lack of comfort when he travels and finds himself without his soft mattress and carefully arranged pillows. For this reason, I think it would be wise to vary how his bed is made: sometimes let his head rest higher, sometimes lower, so that small changes in sleeping conditions don't trouble him. After all, he won't always have the luxury of his own carefully prepared bed at home, with a maid arranging everything just so and tucking him in snugly. Sleep is nature's great restorative. The person who misses it will suffer for it, and it's a real misfortune to be someone who can only take that restorative from a fine gilded cup rather than a plain wooden bowl. The person who sleeps soundly has received the benefit, and it makes no difference whether he's lying on a soft mattress or bare boards. Sleep itself is what matters, nothing else.
§ 23. You might expect me to offer some guidance on medicine for preventing illness, but I have only one piece of advice on that subject, and it should be followed without exception: never give children medicine as a preventive measure. Following the recommendations I've already outlined will do more good than any fashionable health tonics or apothecary's remedies. Be very careful about meddling in that direction, because instead of preventing illness, you may actually bring it on. Nor should medicine be given, or a physician called, at every minor complaint in a child, especially if that physician is the busy sort who will quickly fill the windowsill with medicine jars and the child's stomach with drugs. It is safer to leave children entirely to nature than to place them in the hands of someone eager to intervene, or who believes that ordinary childhood ailments require anything beyond a careful diet, or something very close to it. Both reason and experience suggest to me that children's delicate constitutions should be interfered with as little as possible, and only to the degree that genuine necessity demands. A small amount of cold distilled red poppy water, which is the true remedy for overindulgence, combined with rest and a light diet free of meat, will often stop several ailments in their early stages that might have become serious diseases if treated too aggressively from the start. When such a gentle approach fails to check the growing problem or prevent it from developing into a full-blown illness, then it will be time to seek the advice of a sensible and careful physician. On this point, I expect to be believed without much resistance. No one can reasonably question the advice of someone who has spent considerable time studying medicine when that person urges you not to be too quick to reach for remedies and doctors.
§ 24. And with that, I've covered everything related to the body and health, which comes down to a few simple, easy-to-follow rules. Plenty of fresh air, exercise, and sleep; plain food, no wine or strong drink, and very little medicine if any; clothing that isn't too warm or too tight; the head and feet kept cool, and the feet regularly exposed to cold water and wet conditions.
§ 25. Once proper care has been taken to keep the body strong and capable of carrying out the mind's directions, the next and most important task is to set the mind on the right course, so that in every situation it will consent to nothing that falls short of what is fitting for a rational human being.
