A Treatise on Domestic Economy; For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School

be removed. To effect this, Nature has rendered the first portions of the mother's milk purposely watery and laxative. Nurses, however, distrusting Nature, often hasten to administer some active purgative; and the consequence often is, irritation in the stomach and bowels, not easily subdued." It is only where the child is deprived of its mother's milk, as the first food, that some gentle laxative should be given. "It is a common mistake, to suppose, that, because a woman is nursing, she ought to live very fully, and to add an allowance of wine, porter, or other fermented liquor, to her usual diet. The only result of this plan, is, to cause an unnatural fulness in the system, which places the nurse on the brink of disease, and retards, rather than increases, the food of the infant. More will be gained by the observance of the ordinary laws of health, than by any foolish deviation, founded on ignorance." There is no point, on which medical men so emphatically lift the voice of warning, as in reference to administering medicines to infants. It is so difficult to discover what is the matter with an infant, its frame is so delicate and so susceptible, and slight causes have such a powerful influence, that it requires the utmost skill and judgement to ascertain what would be proper medicines, and the proper quantity to be given. Says Dr. Combe, "That there are cases, in which active means must be promptly used, to save the child, is perfectly true. But it is not less certain, that these are cases, of which no mother or nurse ought to attempt the treatment. As a general rule, where the child is well managed, medicine, of any kind, is very rarely required; and if disease were more generally regarded in its true light, not as something thrust into the system, which requires to be expelled by force, but as an aberration from a natural mode of action, produced by some external cause, we should be in less haste to attack it by medicine, and more watchful in its prevention. Accordingly,