TKKTH! 



portions and duly mixed with saliva, without which it will not be proper- 

 ly digested. The horrors and evils of indigestion are too well known 

 need commenting upon here, but the necessity for a due attention to the 

 mastication of food by children will be seen when it is stated that a weak 

 stomach acts tardily and imperfectly upon anything introduced into it not 

 properly chewed ; and the consequences are, the warmth and moisture of 

 the stomach evolve gases, acids are formed, and then follow those distress- 

 ing symptoms such as loss of appetite, flatulence, furred tongue, etc. * 



The period of " teething" is more than interesting, from the fact that, at 

 this stage of child-life, the whole organization seems to undergo a transi- 

 tion. The features, hitherto more or less expressionless, become decided 

 and distinct ; the eye becomes endued with expression, through which the 

 mind seems to speak, as it were; the round appearance of the facial out- 

 line appears elongated, the result of the teeth expanding the jaws ; the 

 forehead is perceptibly developed, and, in short, the entire face assumes 

 an animation previously unknown, but most precious to mothers, on ac- 

 count of its being the ordinary time when " baby is beginning to notice." 



THE ORDER IN WHICH TEETH usually make their appearance is, first, the 

 two central incisors of the lower jaw appear ; then shortly after those of 

 the upper jaw, followed by the lower lateral incisors, and then by the up- 

 per lateral incisors. At the age of a year or fourteen months the four t ; 

 molar teeth should begin to show, and at the sixteenth to the twentieth 

 month the lower and upper canine teeth, followed by the four last mo! 



Although the suffering of infants from the process of dentition arises 

 mainly from irritation of the gums, owing to the teeth working their way 

 through, it is not in the mouth alone that pain is caused ; and where i 

 xcessive, or in children whose constitutions are naturally irritable, 

 irritation is reflected by the nervous system to some other organ orsyst 

 of organs. 



THE MOST ORDINARY EFFECT of this is stomach-ache, or diarrhoea, with 

 LrripiiiL,' pain, which, if in a mild form, is the least to be feared of all the 

 onpleasantneasea Arising from teething; and though its violence may be 

 moderated, it should not be entirely arrested. Under these circumstan- 

 a child s \vi-ak and thin, and its flesh soft and llal>ly ; hut, gene- 



rally speaking, this need not (except, of course, in an extreme casr 

 \ie\v.-d with alarm; for, as soon as the teeth are through, nature soon ri^hu 

 f, and the little one will resume its wonted i^ood looks. When, how- 

 . the symptoms are very distressing, by the quantity and frequency 

 of t! a chalk mixture, with a drop or two of laudanum to the 



ounce, according to the age of the child, may be Driven, in the event of a 



