Squeeze-a-Preemie

People that think doctors are so smart are encouraged to look back a few years when they were sticking their fingers in President McKinley's bullet hole and making new holes as they went; when they used to chop off a man's leg with farm implements or any old thing available without even wiping it off first, and no anaethetics nor none of that hand washin' hocus neither--just hot water and towels, and the water's for coffee. No doubt today's doctors run cleaner, but they've been so abused by the pain relievers they meant to give the patient that they've become sharper than humanly possible, which leaves them intensely focused on subjects they can't recall--well, you try coming off Provigil without Vicodin, and/or vice versa. Anyway. Preemies. Used to be the ittybitties were placed in a vast, transparent chamber to be comforted by wires and tubes and soothed with bright light, isolated from human contact, nuzzled through latex, starved of their mothers, absent her heartbeat. Doctors, perhaps trained so well they couldn't see the obvious, struggled to discover why preemies had such a high failure to thrive, never putting it together that all infants, especially premature infants (one would think) have strong desire to return to their womb, having recently been evicted and not knowing yet that time heals about everything, but it takes time, centuries in the case of Western doctors. Infants, to everyone's enormous surprise, like to be held tightly. The clue came not from watching or listening to preemies thriving failures, but by observing the kangaroo, which births its baby early, then pops it in the to-go pouch. From that they came up with a strap device and began a revolution that's been commonplace in all ancient and present civilizations except those of Anglo-Saxon origin, not to be saxist. So bundle them babies? Couldn't hoit. Okay, it could, taken too far, it could, all right.