Toast a crust of white bread very brown without burning it, and put it into cold water. After an hour, the water will be a refreshing drink; and it is sometimes grateful to the stomach when no other can be taken.
Herb Drinks.
Herb drinks should be made with boiling water in an earthen pitcher or tea-pot, and be drank after standing a few minutes without boiling. Long steeping makes them insipid and disagreeable.
All food and drink for the sick should be prepared with careful attention and perfect neatness, and should be served in as inviting a manner as possible. The appetite of an invalid is excited or checked by things that escape the observation of a person in health.
Food for a Young Infant.
Pour four spoonfuls of boiling water upon one of sweet cream, and add a very little loaf sugar. This receipt was given by an experienced physician, and has been proved, to be entirely suited to the stomach of the youngest infant. But care must be taken to secure good cream; and this can be done only by providing new milk every day, from one cow. Mixed milk cannot be safely used for a little infant.
For a child just weaned.
There is always danger, especially in warm weather, that the stomach, even of a healthy child, will become disordered by being weaned; and it is important to guard against the evil, by careful attention to the diet, for a little while. Boil every morning new milk enough to last twenty-four hours, and stir into it the best of arrow-root wet in cold water, in the proportion of a large teaspoonful to a quart. Add a very little salt, and boil it up again for one minute, then set it in a cold place.
Flour Gruel (for children sick with teething complaints).
Tie up in a piece of thick cotton cloth a coffee-cup of white flour. Put it into boiling water, and keep it boiling steadily three hours. Then remove the cloth and lay the lump where it will become perfectly dry. To use it, grate it and thicken two gills of boiling milk with a dessert spoonful of it wet in cold water. Put a little salt in the milk. This is excellent food for feeble children.