The health of the mother, too, during the period of weaning, often needs great attention. Let her avoid medicine, however, if possible. A due regard to food, drink, exercise, and rest of body and mind, &c., will usually be found more effective, as well as more permanently efficacious.
SEC. 9. Food subsequently to Weaning.
You will allow me to introduce in this place, some of the sentiments of Dr. Cadogan, an English physician, from a little work on the management of children. [Footnote: Though Dr. C.'s remarks will apply more closely to England in 1750, they are by no means inapplicable to the United States in 1837.] I do it with the more pleasure because, though he wrote almost a century ago, he urges the same general principles on which I have all along been insisting: hence it will be seen that mine are no new-fangled notions. His remarks refer to the young of every age, but chiefly to early infancy and childhood. It will be found necessary, in some instances, to abridge, but I shall endeavor not to misrepresent the Doctor's views.
"Look over the bills of mortality. Almost half of those who fill up that black list, die under five years of age; so that half the people that come into the world go out of it again, before they become of the least use to it or to themselves. To me, this seems to deserve serious consideration.
"It is ridiculous to charge it upon nature, and to suppose that infants are more subject to disease and death than grown persons; on the contrary, they bear pain and disease much better—fevers especially; and for the same reason that a twig is less hurt by a storm than an oak.
"In all the other productions of nature, we see the greatest vigor and luxuriancy of health, the nearer they are to the egg or bud. When was there a lamb, a bird, or a tree, that died because it was young? These are under the immediate nursing of unerring nature; and they thrive accordingly.
"Ought it not, therefore, to be the care of every nurse and every parent, not only to protect their nurslings from injury, but to be well assured that their own officious services be not the greatest evils the helpless creatures can suffer?
"In the lower class of mankind, especially in the country, disease and mortality are not so frequent, either among adults or their children. Health and posterity are the portion of the poor—I mean the laborious. The want of superfluity confines them more within the limits of nature; hence they enjoy the blessings they feel not, and are ignorant of their cause.
"In the course of my practice, I have had frequent occasion to be fully satisfied of this; and have often heard a mother anxiously say, 'the child has not been well ever since it has done puking and crying.'