CLASS I. 1. 2. 6. OF IRRITATION. 21 



children, have this natural food of milk prepared for them, the 

 analogy is so strong in favour of its salubrity, that a person 

 should have powerful testimony indeed of its disagreeing before 

 he advises the discontinuance of the use of it to young children 

 in health, and much more so in sickness. The farmers lose many 

 of their calves, which are brought up by gruel, or gruel and old 

 milk; and among the poor children of Derby, who are thus fed, 

 hundreds are starved into the scrofula, and either perish or live 

 in a state of wretched debility. 



When young children are brought up without a breast, they 

 should for the first two months have no food but new milk; 

 since the addition of any kind of bread or flour is liable to fer- 

 ment, and produce too much acidity; as appears by the conse- 

 quent diarrhoea with green dejections and gripes; the colour is 

 owing to a mixture of acid with the natural quantity of bile, and 

 the pain to its stimulus. And they should never be fed as they 

 lie upon their backs, as in that posture they are necessitated to 

 swallow all that is put into their mouths; but when they are fed 3 

 as they are sitting up, or raised up, when they have had enough, 

 they can permit the rest to run out of their mouths. This cir- 

 cumstance is of great importance to the health of those children, 

 who are reared by the spoon, since if too much food is given 

 them, indigestion, and gripes, and diarrhoea, are the consequence; 

 and if too little, they become emaciated; and of this exact quan- 

 tity their own palates judge the best. 



M. M. In this last case of the diarrhoea of children, the food 

 should be new milk, which by curdling destroys part of the acid, 

 which coagulates it. Chalk about four grains every six hours, 

 with one drop of spirit of hartshorn, and half a drop of lauda- 

 num. But a blister about the size of a shilling is of the greatest 

 service by restoring the power of digestion. See Article III. 2. 

 1. in the Materia Medica. 



6. Salivatio calida. Warm salivation. Increased secretion of 

 saliva. This may be effected either by stimulating the mouth 

 of the gland by mercury taken internally; or by stimulating tht- 

 excretory duct of the gland by pyrethrum, or tobacco; or sim- 

 ply by the movement of the muscles, which lie over the gland, 

 as in masticating any tasteless substance, as a lock of wool, o? 

 mastic. 



In about the middle of nervous fevers a great spitting of saliva 

 sometimes occurs, which has been thought critical; but as it con- 

 tinues sometimes two or even three weeks without the relief of 

 the patient, it may be concluded to arise from some accidental 

 circumstance, perhaps not unsimilar to the hysteric 

 mentioned in Class I. 3. . 2. See Sect. XXIV, 



