"These complaints, though not attended to, point very plainly to the cause. Is it not very evident that when a child rids its stomach of its contents several times a day, it has been overloaded? While the natural strength lasts, (for every child is born with more health and strength than is generally imagined,) it cries at or rejects the superfluous load, and thrives apace; that is, grows very fat, bloated, and distended beyond measure, like a house lamb.
"But in time, the same oppressive cause continuing, the natural powers are overcome, being no longer able to throw off the unequal weight. The child, now unable to cry any more, languishes and is quiet.
"The misfortune is, that these complaints are not understood. The child is swaddled and crammed on, till, after gripes, purging, &c., it sinks under both burdens into a convulsion fit, and escapes farther torture. This would be the case with the lamb, were it not killed, when full fat.
"That the present mode of nursing is wrong, one would think needed no other proof than the frequent miscarriages attending it, the death of many, and the ill health of those that survive. But what I am going to complain of is, that children, in general, are over-clothed and over-fed, and fed and clothed improperly. To these causes I attribute almost all their diseases.
"But the feeding of children is much more important to them than their clothing. Let us consider what nature directs in the case. If we follow nature, instead of leading or driving her, we cannot err. In the business of nursing, as well as physic, art, if it do not exactly copy this original, is ever destructive.
"If I could prevail, no child should ever be crammed with any unnatural mixture, till the provision of nature was ready for it; nor afterwards fed with any ungenial diet whatever, at least for the first three months; for it is not well able to digest and assimilate other elements sooner.
"I have seen very healthy children that never ate or drank anything whatever but their mother's milk, for the first ten or twelve months. Nature seems to direct to this, by giving them no teeth till about that time. The call of nature should be waited for to feed them with anything more substantial; and the appetite ought ever to precede the food—not only with regard to the daily meals, but those changes of diet which opening, increasing life requires. But this is never done, in either case; which is one of the greatest mistakes of all nurses.
"When the child requires more solid sustenance, we are to inquire what and how much is most proper to give it. We may be well assured there is a great mistake either in the quantity or quality of children's food, or both, as it is usually given them, because they are made sick by it; for to this mistake I cannot help imputing nine in ten of all their diseases.
"As to quantity, there is a most ridiculous error in the common practice; for it is generally supposed that whenever a child cries, it wants victuals: it is accordingly fed ten or twelve or more times in a day and night. This is so obvious a misapprehension, that I am surprised it should ever prevail.
"If a child's wants and motions be diligently and judiciously attended to, it will be found that it never cries, but from pain. Now the first sensations of hunger are not attended with pain; accordingly, a very young child that is hungry will make a hundred other signs of its want, before it will cry for food. If it be healthy, and quite easy in its dress, it will hardly ever cry at all. Indeed, these signs and motions I speak of are but rarely observed, because it seldom happens that children are ever suffered to be hungry.[Footnote: That which we commonly observe in them, in such cases, and call by the name of hunger, the Doctor, I suppose would regard as morbid or unnatural feeling, wholly unworthy of the name of HUNGER.]