FOOTNOTES:
[8] The directions given by the distinguished chemist, Dr. Frankland, to whom I am indebted for the suggestion, are as follows: 'One-third of a pint of new milk is allowed to stand until the cream has settled; the latter is removed, and to the blue milk thus obtained about a square inch of rennet is to be added, and the milk vessel placed in warm water.' (I may add that the artificial rennet sold by most chemists may be substituted for the other.) 'In about five minutes the rennet, which may again be repeatedly used, being removed, the whey is carefully poured off, and immediately heated to boiling to prevent its becoming sour. A further quantity of curd separates, and must be removed by straining through calico. In one quarter of a pint of this hot whey is to be dissolved three-eighths of an ounce of milk sugar, and this solution, along with the cream removed from the one-third of a pint of milk, must be added to half a pint of new milk. This will constitute the food for an infant of from five to eight months old for twelve hours; or, more correctly speaking, it will be one-half of the quantity required for twenty-four hours. It is absolutely necessary that a fresh quantity should be prepared every twelve hours; and it is scarcely necessary to add that the strictest cleanliness in all the vessels used is indispensable.'
[9] In our tables of mortality we find teething registered as having occasioned the death of nearly 5 (4.8) per cent. of all children who died in London under one year old; and of 7.3 per cent. of those who died between the age of twelve months and three years.
PART III.
ON THE DISORDERS AND DISEASES INCIDENT TO ALL PERIODS OF CHILDHOOD.
The ailments hitherto noticed are by no means all that may occur during infancy and early childhood, but those only which either happen then exclusively, or at least with far greater frequency than at other times.
It will be most convenient to consider the others under the different systems to which they belong, as diseases of the head, of the chest, and of the bowels.
Before entering on these new subjects, however, a few words may not be out of place with reference to what may be termed the second period of childhood. It is above all a time of wonderfully lessened sickness and mortality. We have not the means of stating exactly the rate at which mortality is lessened between the cessation of the first and the commencement of the second dentition; but we do know that it is ten times less between the age of one and five, and nearly twenty times less between five and ten than it was in the first year of existence.[10] A mother's anxiety then may safely be quieted after the first year of her infant's life, and still more after the first set of teeth have been cut, for if her child is strong and healthy then, there will be comparatively little to fear for its future.
Four years or thereabouts now follow, before any important change takes place in the child's condition, for it is not until between six and seven years old that the first set of teeth begin to be shed, and the second to take their place. This change of teeth too is of far less moment as far as the health is concerned, than was the cutting of the first set. The first dentition was the preparation for an entirely new mode of life for the child, and was intended to fit it for a life independent of its mother. The second has no such signification; it is a mere local alteration rendered necessary by the growth of the jaws, and takes place quietly, by the gradual absorption of the roots of the first set of teeth, brought about by the pressure of the others as they approach the surface. Four teeth in each jaw are new, and replace no others, but usually they are cut without much discomfort, and the wisdom teeth do not concern us here, for they do not appear until childhood has long passed.
But, though between the age of two years and of ten there is no important change, nor even preparation for a change in the constitution, the time is yet one of most active growth of the body, and consolidation of the skeleton. The stature increases from 2 ft. 6 in. to 4 ft. 6 in., and the weight nearly doubles, while at the same time the ends of the long bones previously connected with the shafts by means of cartilage or gristle, become firmly united by the conversion of that cartilage into bone, and a similar process goes on, though not completed till later, in the ribs and the breast bone.
Rapid increase of height and weight; conversion of the elements of bone into bone itself, formation of muscle out of the fat, which in the young child was stored up as so much building material for an edifice in course of construction, require for their accomplishment perfect health, and the power of converting to its highest purposes all the nourishment received. What wonder then, if from time to time, the machinery thus hardly taxed, fails to be quite equal to the demands upon it, if pains in the limbs—growing pains, as they are commonly called, or head-ache, tell of the inadequate nerve supply. Or if from the same cause, a vague feverish condition comes on, in which the temperature is slightly raised, and the child listless, and yet fretful, loses its cheerfulness, is dull at its easy tasks, and yet indifferent to play. This too is the time when any unsuspected defects, physical, or mental, or moral, begin to show themselves distinctly; when short sight becomes apparent so soon as the child has to learn its letters, when the dull hearing is perceived which makes it seem inattentive, and gives to its manner an unchildlike nervousness; and the weak intellect is displayed in causeless laughter, causeless mischief, causeless passion, imperfect power of articulation, or want of words, and by a restless busyness in doing nothing.
Of all these things I shall have to speak later on more fully. They are the things however, which only those mothers notice who live much with their children, who do not banish them all day long to the nursery or the school-room, and learn from another whether they fare well or ill. They and only they will notice these things in whom there dwells that which the poet tells us of:
The mother's love that grows
From the soft child, to the strong man; now soft,
Now strong as either, and still one sole same love.