Cure.—First, keep the child cleanly: and, secondly, take off the sharpness of its urine. As to keeping it cleanly, she must be a sorry nurse that needs to be taught how to do it; for if she lets it have but dry, clean, and warm beds, and clothes, as often and as soon as it has fouled and wet them, either by its urine or excrements, it will be sufficient. And as to taking off the sharpness of the child’s urine, that must be done by the nurse’s taking a cool diet, that her milk may have the same quality; and therefore she ought to abstain from all things that may tend to heat it.
But besides these cooling and drying remedies are requisite to be applied to the inflamed parts; therefore let the parts be bathed with plantain water, with a fourth of lime-water added to it, each time the child’s excrements are wiped off; and if the pain be very great, let it only be fomented with lukewarm milk. Some kind of drying powder, or a little milldust strewed upon the parts affected, may be proper enough, and is used by many women. Also, unguentum album, or diapampholigos, spread upon a small piece of leather, in form of a plaster, will not be amiss.
But the chief thing must be the nurse’s taking great care to wrap the inflamed parts with fine rags when she opens the child, that those parts may not gather and be pained by rubbing together.
Sect. VII. Of Vomiting in young Children.
Vomiting in children proceeds sometimes from too much milk, and sometimes from bad milk, and as often from a moist loose stomach; for as dryness retains, so looseness lets go. This is, for the most part, without danger in children; and they that vomit from their birth are the lustiest; for the stomach not being used to meat, and milk being taken too much, crudities are easily bred, or the milk is corrupted; and it is better to vomit these up than to keep them in; but if vomiting last long, it will cause an atrophy, or consumption, for want of nourishment.
Cure.—If this be from too much milk, that which is emitted is yellow and green, or otherwise ill-coloured and stinking; in this case, mend the milk, as has been shown before; cleanse the child with honey of roses, and strengthen its stomach with syrup of milk and quinces made into an electuary. If the humours be hot and sharp, give the syrup of pomegranates, currants, and coral; and apply to the bowels the plaster of bread, the stomach cerate, or bread dipped in hot wine; or oil of mastich, quinces, mint, wormwood, each half an ounce; of nutmegs, by expression, half a drachm; chemical oil of mint, three drops. Coral hath an occult property to prevent vomiting, and is therefore hung about the neck.
Sect. VIII. Of breeding Teeth in young Children.
This is a very great yet necessary evil in all children, having a variety of symptoms joined with it. They begin to come forth, not all at once, but one after the other, about the sixth or seventh month; the fore-teeth coming first, then the eye-teeth, and, last of all, the grinders. The eye-teeth cause more pain to the child than any of the rest, because they have a deep root, and a small nerve which hath communication with that which makes the eye move.
In the breeding of the teeth, first they feel an itching in their gums, then they are pierced as with a needle, and pricked by the sharp bones, whence proceed great pains, watching, inflammation of the gums, fever, looseness, and convulsions, especially when they breed their eye-teeth.
The signs when children breed their teeth are these.