In most cases the attack is mild, and readily yields to a few hours' abstinence from food. As it often happens, especially in artificially-fed infants, that the gastric juice is more acid than it should be, great benefit is derived from the use of precipitated chalk or carbonate of soda. A few grains of either of these, given several times a day for a few days, will be found to effect a surprising change and alone restore the appetite and digestion.
In older children an attack of indigestion should be the signal for putting them upon a simpler and more restricted diet for a time. Milk, eggs, arrowroot, tapioca, sago, panada, &c., are better than animal food. If the child becomes much weakened, jellies, chicken, lamb, mutton, or oyster broth, beef tea, or wine whey, should be given to check the tendency to exhaustion.
We repeat, that most cases of indigestion in infants and children yield promptly to an immediate change in the diet, without medicine.
HINTS ON HOME GOVERNMENT.
On this subject, as it may be regarded as outside of our domain of hygiene, we have but few words to say. We wish, however, in the interests of medicine and hygiene, to insist upon the necessity of training children to prompt, implicit obedience to the parental voice. As physicians, we have seen the spoilt, undisciplined child, when sick, rebellious alike to persuasion and command, refusing food and medicine, revolting against the slightest examination, and by its violence and capriciousness, converting a slight illness into a dangerous one. For a child unaccustomed to obedience there is no proper treatment possible when sick; nor when well is there any proper care possible for the preservation of the health. What it wants, and not what it ought to have, is given it, and every one knows that a child's instincts are no guide to health. With health, happiness is sacrificed also. There is no surer way of making a child miserable than by accustoming it to obtain all it wishes, and to encounter no will but its own. Its desires grow by what they feed upon. As a French writer on education has well expressed it: 'At first it will want the cane you hold in your hand, then your watch, then the bird it sees flying in the air, and then the star twinkling overhead. How, short of omnipotence, is it possible to gratify its ever-growing wants?' Accustom the child to hear 'no' and 'must,' but let these hard words be softened by voice and manner—an art in which every true mother excels.
But, on the other hand, do not harass the child by needless restrictions, nor worry it by excess of management. We desire to call attention here to the words of an eminent English divine and learned writer, Archbishop Whately:—
'Most carefully should we avoid the error which some parents, not (otherwise) deficient in good sense commit, of imposing gratuitous restrictions and privations, and purposely inflicting needless disappointments, for the purpose of inuring children to the pains and troubles they will meet with in after life. Yes; be assured they will meet with quite enough in every portion of life, including childhood, without your strewing their paths with thorns of your own providing. And often enough you will have to limit their amusements for the sake of needful study, to restrain their appetites for the sake of health, to chastise them for faults, and in various ways to inflict pain or privations for the sake of avoiding some greater evils. Let this always be explained to them whenever it is possible to do so; and endeavor in all cases to make them look on the parent as never the voluntary giver of anything but good. To any hardships which they are convinced you inflict reluctantly, and to those which occur through the dispensation of the All-wise, they will more easily be trained to submit with a good grace, than to any gratuitous sufferings devised for them by fallible man. To raise hopes on purpose to produce disappointment, to give provocation merely to exercise the temper, and, in short, to inflict pain of any kind, merely as a training for patience and fortitude—this is a kind of discipline which man should not presume to attempt. If such trials prove a discipline not so much of cheerful fortitude as of resentful aversion and suspicious distrust of the parent as a capricious tyrant, you will have only yourself to thank for the result.' It is a matter of common observation that those who complain of their fortune and lot in life have often to complain only of their own conduct. The same is true of those who complain of their children. They have themselves only to blame in each case.
Parents who do not appreciate the responsibilities of their position usually err on the side of over-indulgence to their children; on the contrary, those fully alive to the importance of home discipline often err on the side of over-regulation. To the latter, we commend the reply of an old lady to the anxious inquiry made by the mother of a too rigorously disciplined child as to what course should be pursued, 'I recommend, my dear, a little wholesome neglect.'
Lessons of truthfulness; of fortitude in bearing pain and disappointment; of the duty of right doing, because it is right and not because it is the best policy; of frugality and industry; of self-denial, contentment, and charity, should be early impressed upon the plastic mind of infancy. We wish also, in this connection, to quote the words of a wise physician and observer of men, that 'the little child who is brought up to repeat short and simple prayers at his mother's knees, has a rule of conduct thereby instilled into him which will probably never be forgotten; and, in after life he may not only look back to these beginnings with feelings of reverence and love, but the recollection of them may serve to strengthen him in some good resolution, and help him to resist many a powerful temptation.'
We have had occasion frequently in various parts of this work to point out the intimate relations which exist between the physical and mental nature of parents and their offspring. Like parent, like child. The same close connection and sympathy extends to the moral and religious character; hence that direction and training which relies largely upon the force of parental example is the most effective method of home government. Virtuous precepts, or rigidly enforced rules of conduct, avail little unless the parent keeps the path to which he points the child.