Page:The physical training of children (IA 39002011126464.med.yale.edu).pdf/17

 and no angel, so long as he saw their innocence, could lose his own."

The arrangement of the book is in the form of questions and answers. This is an excellent idea, the long experience of the author, as a physician, enabling him to suggest many important questions that would escape the inexperienced mother or nurse.

The first chapter treats of the management of the infant from the moment of its birth; and, although the care of the infant is not intrusted to the mother at this time, it is very important that she should know just how it should be managed, and she will then be able to instruct her nurse, and prevent her carrying into execution many of the hobbies of which old nurses are often very fond. The most of them are founded on error, and may be of the greatest injury to the infant at this tender period of its existence. For instance, the author tells us that the infant should be put to the mother's breast soon after its birth, and should receive food of no other kind. Now there is the strongest desire on the part of many nurses to feed the child with some one of the many preparations used for this purpose as soon as it is dressed, or, at any rate, before the mother's milk makes its appearance—forgetting that nature has made no mistake in her affairs here, and will not be interfered with without requiring the poor victim to pay the penalty;—and so we find that if the child's stomach be filled with pap, gruel, or anything of the kind, the result will be acidity, griping, colic, and vomiting, and you will have made a bad beginning by interfering with nature, instead of a good one by leaving her alone. In