Page:The physical training of children (IA 39002011126464.med.yale.edu).pdf/62

 spirits) to his food. Many children have, by such a practice, been made puny and delicate, and have gradually dropped into an untimely grave. An infant who is kept, for the first three or four months, entirely to the breast—more especially if the mother be careful in her own diet—seldom suffers from "wind;" those, on the contrary, who have much or improper food, suffer severely. For the first three or four months never, if you can possibly avoid it, give artificial food to an infant who is sucking. There is nothing, in the generality of cases, that agrees, for the first few months, like the mother's milk alone. Care in feeding, then, is the grand preventive of "wind;" but if, notwithstanding all your precautions, the child be troubled with flatulence, the remedies recommended under the head of Flatulence will generally answer the purpose. 44. Have you any remarks to make on sugar for sweetening a baby's food?

A small quantity of sugar in an infant's food is requisite, sugar being nourishing and fattening, and making cows' milk to resemble somewhat in its properties human milk; but, bear in mind, ''it must be used sparingly. Much'' sugar cloys the stomach, weakens the digestion, produces acidity, sour belchings, and wind.

If a baby's bowels be either regular or relaxed, lump sugar is the best for the purpose of sweetening his food; if his bowels are inclined to be costive, brown sugar ought to be substituted for lump sugar, as brown sugar acts on a young babe as an aperient, and, in the generality of cases, is far preferable to physicking him with opening medicine. An infant's bowels, whenever it be practicable (and it generally is), ought to be regulated by a judicious dietary rather than by physic.