[148]. Liebig, the great chemist, asserts that a small quantity of table salt to the food is essential to the health of children.
[149]. It now and then happens that if the milk be not boiled, the motions of an infant are offensive; when such is the case let the milk be boiled, but not otherwise.
[150]. “It should be thin, and of a bluish-white color, sweet to the taste, and when allowed to stand should throw up a considerable quantity of cream.”—Maunsell and Evenson on the Diseases of Children.
[151]. Sir Charles Locock considers that a woman who menstruates during lactation is objectionable as a wet-nurse, and “that as a mother with her first child is more liable to that objection, that a second or third child’s mother is more eligible than a first.”—Letter to the Author.
[152]. “The child is poisoned.”
“Poisoned! by whom?”
“By you. You have been fretting.”
“Nay, indeed, mother. How can I help fretting?”
“Don’t tell me, Margaret. A nursing mother has no business to fret. She must turn her mind away from her grief to the comfort that lies in her lap. Know you not that the child pines if the mother vexes herself?”—The Cloister and the Hearth. By Charles Reade.
[153]. The previous boiling of the milk will prevent the warmth of the bed turning the milk sour, which it would otherwise do.