Page:The physical training of children (IA 39002011126464.med.yale.edu).pdf/259

 prevent them is to avoid such things, and, at the same time, to give him plenty of salt to his fresh and well-*cooked meat. Salt strengthens and assists digestion, and is absolutely necessary to the human economy. Salt is emphatically a worm-destroyer. The truth of this statement may be readily tested by sprinkling a little salt on the common earth-worm. "What a comfort and real requisite to human life is salt! It enters into the constituents of the human blood, and to do without it is wholly impossible." To do without it is wholly impossible! These are true words. Look well to it, therefore, ye mothers, and beware of the consequences of neglecting such advice, and see for yourselves that your children regularly eat salt with their food. If they neglect eating salt with their food, they must, of necessity, have worms, and worms that will eventually injure them and make them miserable. 269. You have a great objection to the frequent administration of aperient medicines to a child: can you devise any method to prevent their use?

Although we can scarcely call constipation a disease, yet it sometimes leads to disease. The frequent giving of aperients only adds to the stubbornness of the bowels.

I have generally found a draught, early every morning, of cold pump water, the eating either of loaf ginger-bread or of oatmeal ginger-bread, a variety of animal and vegetable food, ripe sound fruit, Muscatel raisins, a fig, or an orange after dinner, and, when he be old enough, coffee and milk instead of tea and milk, to have the desired effect, more especially if, for a time, aperients be studiously avoided. 270. Have you any remarks to make on Rickets?

Rickets is owing to a want of a sufficient quantity of earthy matter in the bones; hence the bones bend and twist, and lose their shape, causing deformity. Rickets