598 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ing that way, they would feel ashamed to be sick, or to have sick 

 children." 



A vestige of the hygienic insight which in savages appears to be a 

 gift of Nature, would, indeed, almost obviate the necessity of a treatise 

 on the diseases of infancy ; nay, wherever people have got rid of four 

 or live of the grossest physiological prejudices, the art of preserving 

 the health of a healthy-born child is even now a sort of intuition with 

 every true mother ; but nurses, physicians, and foster-parents, are often 

 called upon to mend the mistakes of their j^redecessors, and to under- 

 take a task whose less intuitive duties may be facilitated by some of 

 the following hints on remedial education : 



Shakespeare's " mewling and puking " representative of babyhood 

 was probably overfed. The representative nurse believes in cram- 

 ming ; babies, like prize-pigs, are most admired when they are ready 

 to die with fatty degeneration. The child is coaxed to suckle almost 

 every half -hour, day after day, till habit begets a morbid appetite, 

 analogous to the dyspeptic's stomach distress which no food can relieve 

 till over-repletion brings on a sort of gastric lethargy. 



" Many hand-fed infants, weighing about ten pounds, will swallow 

 one and a half quart of cow's milk in one day," says Dr. Page ; * " now, 

 considering the needs of a moderately working man to be equal in pro- 

 portion to size, a man weighing one hundred and fifty pounds should 

 take 'fifteen times the quantity swallowed by the infant, or twenty-two 

 and a half quarts a quart for nearly every hour of the day and night ! " 



Yomiting, restlessness, and gross fatness, are some of the symptoms 

 of the surfeit-disease, and its proper cure is not soothing-sirups, but 

 fasting. Four nursings a day are enough, five more than enough, and 

 the ejection of milk after suckling is a sure sign that the quantity 

 given at each meal should be diminished. A pint of milk a day is 

 about as much as a dyspeptic infant can really digest, and to cram it 

 merely in order to stop its crying is quite mistaking the cause of its 

 restlessness ; a half -starved child will not cry, because the languor of 

 insufiicient nutrition is a pleasure compared with the gastric torments 

 of the surfeit-disease. Children actually perishing wdth hunger will 

 utter from time to time a j^eculiar sharp cry, almost like the call of a 

 hungry nest-bird, but the first mouthful of food makes them relapse 

 into a sort of dreamy silence. 



There are nurslings who get at least four times more milk and pap 

 than they can possibly assimilate, and whose digestive organs have to 

 reject the surplus in a way that would make life intolerable to an 

 adult, though most nurses seem to consider retching and " dripping " as 

 a normal phase of infant life. 



Drugs only complicate the disorder : many children whose consti- 

 tution would have resisted the cramming process succumb to opiates, 

 " surfeit- water " and ipecacuanha ; but, unless foul dormitories still fur- 



* "How to feed a Baby to make it healthy and happy," p. 23, 



