Page:Alcohol, a Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine.djvu/249

Rh die, very much more frequently than other children, of convulsions and diarrhœa, while cutting their teeth, and they are very liable to die of scrofulous inflammation of the membranes of the brain, commonly called 'water on the brain,' while their childhood often presents a painful contrast in the way of crooked legs, and stunted or ill-shapen figure—to the 'magnificent,' and promising appearance of their infancy.

"Those ladies who adopt the general views I have thus expressed in relation to the nursing of their children, will want to know what is the 'proper artificial food' with which to supplement their milk when it is deficient in quantity. With some patients the milk will fall off in quantity at the end of two or three months. With others, although the quantity may not fall off, the child seems unsatisfied; and there is a third class with whom a profusion of milk is supplied, and the child thrives exceedingly, but the mother gets flabby, weak, nervous, pale and exhausted. In the last case, the mother is simply goaded on by susceptibility of her nervous system, or by inordinate activity of the breasts to yield an amount of milk which her digestive powers are not equal to providing for. The treatment of such cases should be simply repressive. The mother should separate herself somewhat more from the child, and make a rule of only nursing it from five to eight times in the twenty-four hours, while the neck of the mother should be kept cool in regard to dress, and cold sponging may be practiced carefully night and morning. Her attention should be diverted by outdoor exercise on foot, and additionally in a carriage if necessary. When the mother's milk, though apparently not deficient in quantity, proves unsatisfying to the child, great attention should be paid to varying the diet of the mother, while such staple foods should be taken as are most easily and thoroughly assimilated into milk. The unsatisfying quality of the milk will generally be remedied by taking a more varied diet, together with three or four half pints of milk in the course of the day, accompanied with farinaceous matter, as in the shape of well-made milk gruel; and in