may be, the first-born child grows up delicate and weakly; but the parents are wise enough to use their dear-bought experience, and the adoption of a more rational course secures a better lot for the future children. Such instances unequivocally prove that health is not a mere matter of chance, but the natural reward of an intelligent and persevering prudence.

Then, again, in reference to teething, and to those complaints of infant life to which all are more or less subject, it is most important that the mother should distinctly understand that the adoption from the first of a mode of management in accordance with the nature and wants of the infant constitution, is by far the most effectual way to diminish their danger. A large proportion of the diseases, which do destroy life in early infancy, are more or less directly connected with the condition of the digestive organs and bowels, and one of the principal sources of derangement is undoubtedly errors in diet. Mistaken kindness, sacrificing the health of a child to the indulgence of the false love of the parent, constantly occasions this evil. I have seen a child, who, from the careful management of the mother, had never had a day's illness, sustain an attack of diarrhoea, which endangered its life, from the father giving an improper article of food. Now this mistake in a minor degree is constantly practised by parents; and although the mischief may not be manifested so quickly, a sure and permanent injury is being inflicted.

The consideration of all the points in which 'bad management' may be exemplified, would be premature in an introductory chapter. But let us take that of ventilation. The want of it, in the apartments occupied by children, is fruitful of evil. To be convinced

of above twenty years, that, in those families in which the principles laid down in this work have been followed out with persevering care, patience, and judgment-with the exception of disease from unavoidable causes, the children have grown up strong and healthy. But then parents and dependents have steadily acted day by day up to these principles, in themselves simple enough, but demanding the exercise of constant self-control, until they become the very habit of nursery government.

It is necessary to apprise the reader that throughout this book the period of INFANCY is considered to be under two years of age-and that of CHILDHOOD from two to eight years of age.

PART I.

MANAGEMENT OF CHILDREN IN HEALTH.

CHAPTER I.

MATERNAL NURSING.

Sect. 1.-The Duty and Advantages of the Mother Nursing her Infant.

Ir may be called a fixed law of Nature that a healthy woman should suckle her offspring. There are exceptions; but as a general rule it holds good, and, like all other laws in nature, it cannot be broken with impunity. To refuse to comply with this arrangement of Providence, is to forego the first reward of previous suffering. It is plainly intended to cherish and increase the love of the parent herself, and to establish in the dependent and helpless infant from the first hours of its existence those associations on which its affection and confidence afterwards will be most securely founded. The evidence of design is manifest. So long as the child is unborn, no milk is secreted in the mother's breast, but no sooner does she give it birth, than this fluid is prepared and poured forth, admirably fitted in its qualities for the rapid

growth of the babe's delicate organism. It embraces the three principles (the albuminous, the oleaginous, and saccharine) of which the diet of man consists in his most perfect physical development and greatest intellectual vigour; and moreover is the only food supplied by nature, in which such a combination does exist. 'It is a model,' says Dr. Prout, 'of what an alimentary substance ought to be-a kind of prototype, as it were, of nutritious materials in general.' And thus it continues to be secreted day by day, until, having acquired the power of assimilating other kinds of food, and of extracting from them those elements which are necessary to its further growth, the digestive organs of the infant no longer require this compound food.

Nursing would also seem to be as beneficial to the system of the healthy woman as to her child. In the lying-in month it undoubtedly is the means of preventing or diminishing the tendency to disease. During the whole period of nursing it contributes greatly to preserve and promote the mother's health; for no period of the woman's life, generally speaking, is so healthy as this, and many a woman who has previously been delicate will become robust and strong at this time. In most women it prevents the too frequent recurrence of pregnancy, than which nothing tends so surely to undermine the constitution, and to induce a premature old age. It diminishes the disposition to cancerous affections of the breast; for although women who have had children are still liable to these, yet it is undoubtedly true, that breasts which have been unemployed in suckling in women who have been married, but are childless, and in those who have remained single, are more prone to malignant

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diseases than those of women who have nursed large families.' 1

It is very clear that there is no nourishment so well suited to the constitution of the individual child as its own mother's milk; there is a natural relation between the two, which is not so perfectly realised when the child is transferred to another breast. This practice, however, when it does not arise from necessity, is not nearly so prevalent as in former times. There are few women in the present day disposed to devolve the dearest and greatest privilege of a mother on a stranger. But whenever, without due reason, the healthy woman of fashionable life, from caprice, the fear of trouble, the loss of pleasure, the anxiety to avoid the confinement which suckling necessarily imposes, or any cause of a like frivolous kind-feels disposed to break this law of her being, it behoves her to look to the possible consequences to herself of being out of harmony with it-for no one can fail to perceive the significance of the facts to which allusion has just been made. Animals, even those of the most ferocious character, show affection for their young; they do not forsake or neglect them, but yield them their milk and watch over them with the tenderest care-woman, who is possessed of reason as well as instinct, must not manifest a love below that of the brute creature.

Sect. 2.-Of Mothers who cannot Suckle.

There are circumstances undoubtedly which disqualify the parent from the performance of this duty, and I believe such individuals for the most part will

1 Sir Astley Cooper on Diseases of the Breast, p. 137.