The dangers of Victorian teething
My son is cutting teeth. Those large molars push their way out and affect both his and my mood. We adapt to a bit less sleep and a bit more crying. But this wasn’t just a slightly uncomfortable phase in Victorian times, it was deadly. Not because of the teeth, but because of what people did to try to cure their children.
This was a time when those early years were pretty dangerous anyway. More than 16 percent of babies in the UK didn’t survive their first year in 1899.
Unfortunately the medical profession at the time didn’t always help. It started at birth. In the mid 1800s more and more doctors, rather than midwives, started to deliver babies. At the same time more women started to die from septicaemia. Many doctors refused to wash their hands before attending to a birth – even when some of them came straight from dissecting the dead. There was one Hungarian physician, Ignaz Semmelweis, who suggested hand washing might be a good idea. His colleagues didn’t agree and he was sent to a mental asylum.
But, back to teeth. One Victorian author estimated around 16 percent of child deaths were teething related. The story went like this: the child starts to cry and gets upset, the parents worry it’s food related and stop giving milk, they offer bread mixed with water or oats instead, the child gets more upset and is now given drugs, often containing opium, this is sometimes too much for the little one to handle and the baby dies. Another common cure was to lance the gums. Purgatives were given for almost everything.
Those poor babies.
– Facts from The Victorian House by Judith Flanders
– Painting by Helen Allingham