Danger of Children Sleeping With Aged Persons.

Otago Witness, Issue 1934, 19 March 1891, Page 38

Danger of Children Sleeping With Aged Persons.

A not uncommon cause of loss of vital power is the young sleeping with the aged. The fact, however explained, has been long remarked, but it has been most unaccountably overlooked in medical practice. A noted physician says :— " I have on several occasions met with the counterpart of the following case : I was, a few years since, consulted about a pale, sickly, and thin boy, of about five or six years of age. He appeared to have no specific ailment, but there was a slow and remarkable decline of flesh and strength, and of the energy of all the functions — what his mother yery aptly termed a gradual blight. After inquiring into the history of the case, it came out tbat he had been a robust and plethoric child up to his third year, when his grandmother, a very aged person, took him to sleep with her ; that he soon afterwards lost his good looks, and he had continued to decline ever since, notwithstanding medical treatment. I directed him to sleep apart from his aged grandparent, and prescribed tonics, change of air, &c. The recovery was rapid." It is not with children only that debility is induced by this mode of abstracting vital power. The facts are often well known to the aged themselves, who consider the practice favourable to their longevity, and therefore often illustrate the selfishness which, in some persons, increases with their years. Those in good health should never Bleep with sickly persons.