The Small Unwashed

Shortly after a newborn infant is first washed and groomed he is liable to break out in a rash of small red pimples. Few mothers receive their babies smooth and rosy as a peach. Few doctors believe such pyodermia can be forestalled.

Dr. William Forest Patrick of Portland, Ore. had a heretical hunch that nature provides for the newborn. In 1931 he let nature take its course, left the original oily "varnish" on several babies, neither washed nor greased them for two weeks. He found them free from all skin infections. Last week, the Multnomah County (Ore.) Hospital announced that it had employed the "Patrick method" for three years, found only two cases of pyodermia among 1,916 unwashed, unanointed babies. Each day clothes were changed and buttocks washed with warm water, but beyond this the infants were not handled.

Said Pediatrician Landon Howard Smith of the University of Oregon, who introduced the Patrick method into Multnomah: "Within twelve hours after birth the infant's skin is clean; the vernix [film covering the newborn] has disappeared! Unless one has witnessed the phenomenon, this miracle does not seem possible. It would appear that if this greasy, slimy, newborn infant, who looks as if he had been rescued from a sewer, were not immediately cleaned up, he would smell like a dead fish in 24 hours. What a contrast to behold him a few hours later looking fresh and clean."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.