240 MORE POT-POURRI 



(ninth edition), an exhaustive article on vaccination, 

 which, the writer says, is ' the result of an independent 

 and laborious research.' To me it was interesting and 

 most instructive. The public now have such glorious 

 chances of learning the truth, instead of living on false 

 tradition ; but how few avaU themselves of them ! The 

 statements at the end of the article about the epidemic 

 of smallpox in 1870-71 are most curious, and certainly 

 contradict many of the usual medical assertions. 



To return to the babies. Anxious young mothers 

 with delicate infants are nowadays very apt to get hos- 

 pital nurses to look after them. I am sure that this is a 

 mistake, and I have known two or three cases amongst 

 my acquaintances where this was tried and answered ex- 

 tremely badly. The hospital nurse is apt to be over- 

 clever, and try far too many things, such as changing 

 the foods unnecessarily, and using medicines much too 

 freely. A baby wants ordinary animal care, warmth, 

 regularity of treatment, and the people who look after 

 it to have the courage that comes with love. It does not 

 want remedies which check ailments one day and repro- 

 duce them the next day with renewed force. Why does 

 it never strike the mother or nurse, who gives a child — 

 with absolute courage — a harmful drug, such as fluid 

 magnesia, that they could try instead such harmless 

 remedies as spoonfuls of orange -juice, or apples or 

 prunes rubbed through a sieve ? A doctor told me the 

 other day that a child brought up on fluid magnesia was 

 bound to suffer from that troublesome, if not danger- 

 ous, ailment too well known in most modern nurseries, 

 chronic constipation. 



If a child is very delicate, the mother nervous, and 

 if no good, experienced children's nurse is to be got,' 

 then I would recommend a monthly nurse ; though, of 

 course, they too are sometimes difficult to get. There is 



