[Give the Babies Water.]
A recent editorial article in the New York Medical Record contains the following pertinent remarks on the value of water in the treatment of sick infants:
“With the exception of tuberculosis, no disease is so fatal in infancy as intestinal catarrh occurring especially during the hot summer months, and caused, in the majority of cases, by improper diet. There are many upon whom the idea does not seem to have impressed itself, that an infant can be thirsty without, at the same time, being hungry. When milk, the chief food of infants, is given in excess, acid fermentation results, causing vomiting, diarrhœa, with passage of green or yellowish-green stools, elevated temperature, and the subsequent train of symptoms which are too familiar to need repetition. The same thing would occur in the adult, if drenched with milk. The infant needs no food, but drink. The recommendation of some writers, that barley-water or gum-water be given to the little patients in these cases, is sufficient explanation of their want of success in treating this affection. Pure water is perfectly innocuous to infants, and it is difficult to conceive how the seeming prejudice to it ever arose. Any one who has ever noticed the avidity with which a fretful sick infant drinks water, and marks the early abatement of febrile and other symptoms, will be convinced that water, as a beverage, a quencher of thirst, a physiological necessity, in fact, should not be denied to the helpless member of society. We have often seen an infant which had been dosed ad nauseam for gastro-intestinal irritability, assume, almost at once, a more cheerful appearance, and rapidly grow better, when treated to the much-needed draught of water. If any prescription is valuable enough to be used as routine practice, it is, ‘Give the babies water.’”
[Work for Little Fingers.]
To make a pretty little pitcher, cut off the small end of an egg, then carefully remove the yolk and white of the egg; next take a narrow strip of colored paper and paste it around the edge of the opening, making the paper pinked in one place so as to look like the mouth of a pitcher. Then paste a strip around the other end of the egg so that it will stand alone; to finish the pitcher paste on a strip of paper bent in the shape of a handle. Cups may be made in the same manner by cutting away more of the shell than would be cut in making a pitcher. Pretty air castles are made by cutting egg shells in half, building the cut edges with colored paper or cloth, and fastening to them bright colored cord or silk by which to suspend them. These air castles look pretty when suspended from brackets, hanging lamps, etc. The pitchers, cups and air-castles may be improved by being ornamented with small pictures pasted on them.
Breakfast Cocoa, as a beverage, is universally conceded superior to all other drinks for the weary man of business or the more robust laborer. The preparations of Walter Baker & Co., have long been the standard of merit in this line, and our readers who purchase “Baker’s Breakfast Cocoa” will find it a most healthful, delicious and invigorating beverage.
A man passes for what he is worth. Very idle is all curiosity concerning other people’s estimate of us, and idle is all fear of remaining unknown. If a man knows that he can do anything—that he can do it better than any one else—he has a pledge of the acknowledgment of the fact by all persons. The world is full of judgment days, and into every assembly that man enters, in every action he attempts, he is gauged and stamped.