THE MODERN HORSE DOCTOR. ICo 



Hence our first duty is to attend to the wants of the mother — 

 establish her health if it be impaired ; then, if the foal has scours, 

 or constipation, we may set about obviating the difficulty with 

 some chance of success : even then it is not always good policy 

 to administer medicinal agents to an animal of a few hours' 

 growth ; but we can, with safety, provided our agents are sana- 

 tive, use them on the mother, and thus the foal will have the 

 benefit of them through the lacteal secretion, for it is a well 

 established fact that many medicinal agents pass into the living 

 organism unassimilated, and can be detected in the various secre- 

 tions : thus the color of the cow's milk is changed when that ani- 



the chyle is crude, and the rnilk less subacid; but towards the twelfth hour 

 after eating, the chyle is changed into blood, and then the milk becomes yel- 

 lowish and nauseating, and is spit out by the infant. Hence the best time for 

 giving suck is about the fourth or fifth hour after meals. 



" 3. In Respect to the Time after Delivery. — The milk secreted immediately 

 after delivery is serous, purges the bowels of the infant, and is called colostrum. 

 But in the following days it becomes thicker and more pure, and the longer a 

 nurse suckles, the thicker the milk is secreted. 



" 4. In Respect to Food and Medicines. — Thus, if a nurse eat garlic, the milk 

 becomes highly impregnated with its odor, and is disagreeable. If she indulges 

 too freely in the use of wine or beer, the infant becomes ill ; from giving a pur- 

 ging medicine to a nurse, the child also is purged ; and, lastly, children afflicted 

 with torpor of the bowels, arising from acids, are often cured by giving the 

 nurse animal food. 



"5. In Respect to the Affections of the Mind. — There are frequent examples 

 of infants being seized with convulsions, from suckling mothers irritated by 

 anger. An infant of one year old, while he sucked milk from his enraged 

 mother, on a sudden was seized with a fatal hemorrhage, and died. Infants at 

 the breast, in a short time, pine away if the nurse be afflicted with grievous 

 care ; and there are also infants who, after every coition of the mother, or even 

 if she menstruate, are taken ill." 



The use of the mother's milk is, — 



" 1. It affords the natural aliment to the new-born infant, as milk differs little 

 from chyle. Those children are the strongest who are nourished longest with 

 the mother's milk. [This ice doubt.'] 



"2. The colostrum should not be rejected, for it relaxes the bowels, which in 

 new-born infants ought to be open to clear out the meconium.* 



" 3. Lactation defends the mother from a dangerous reflux of the milk into 

 the blood, whence lacteal metastasis and leticorrhasa are so frequent." 



* Meconium ; the green excremenliticus substance that is found in the large intestine of 

 the foetus in lying-in women, who do not give suck. The motion of the milk also, being 

 hastened through the breasts by the sucking of the child, prevents the very common indu- 

 ration which arises in consequence of the milk being stagnated. — Hooper. 



