Care and Treatment of Children.
"Identical with modern times were the anxious care of mothers, relatives, and nurses, the words of endearment (such as birdie, little dove, little crow, little mother, little lady), and the lisping childish language and the lullabies ('sleep, my child, or suck'), rattles and other means of soothing (such as beating the stone that had hit the child), and the many superstitions, at all ages: such as binding on teeth of horses and boars to alleviate the teething, and old wives' simples and amulets against the evil eye. As a preservative against the strigæ, or vampires, garlic was wrapt up in the swaddling-clothes and hawthorn planted in the windows. A mother, who was passing a temple of Venus, would mumble a prayer for her daughter's beauty and make a vow. The figure of the girls was made artificially perfect. They wore tight stays from early childhood, so as to raise the hips into relief, and nurses' carelessness often produced rounded backs or unequal shoulders."[192]