Nothing is more common than for parents during this period to give their children animal food. This is a great error. It has been well said by Sir James Clark, that "To feed an infant with animal food before it has teeth proper for masticating it, shows a total disregard to the plain indications of nature, in withholding such teeth till the system requires their assistance to masticate solid food. And the method of grating and pounding meat, as a substitute for chewing, may be well suited to the toothless octogenarian, whose stomach is capable of digesting it; but the stomach of a young child is not adapted to the digestion of such food, and will be disordered by it." Upon the same subject Dr. John Clarke observes in his Commentaries:

"If the principles already laid down be true, it cannot reasonably be maintained that a child's mouth without teeth, and that of an adult, furnished with the teeth of carnivorous and graminivorous animals, are designed by the Creator for the same sort of food. If the mastication of solid food, whether animal or vegetable, and a due admixture of saliva, be necessary for digestion, then solid food cannot be proper, when there is no power of mastication. If it is swallowed in large masses it cannot be masticated at all, and will have but a small chance of being digested; and in an

undigested state it will prove injurious to the stomach and to the other organs concerned in digestion, by forming unnatural compounds. The practice of giving solid food to a toothless child, is not less absurd, than to expect corn to be ground where there is no apparatus for grinding it. That which would be considered as an evidence of idiotism or insanity in the last instance, is defended and practised in the former. If, on the other hand, to obviate this evil, the solid matter, whether animal or vegetable, be previously broken into small masses, the infant will instantly swallow it, but it will be unmixed with saliva. Yet in every day's observation it will be seen, that children are so fed in their most tender age; and it is not wonderful that present evils are by this means produced, and the foundation laid for future disease."

The diet pointed out, then, is to be continued until the second year. Great care, however, is necessary in its management; for this period of infancy is ushered in by the process of teething, which is commonly connected with more or less of disorder of the system. Any error, therefore, in diet or regimen is now to be most carefully avoided. 'Tis true that in the infant, who is of a sound and healthy constitution, in whom, therefore, the powers of life are energetic, and who up to this time has been nursed upon the breast of

It is at

its parent, and now commences an artificial diet for the first time, disorder is scarcely perceptible, unless from the operation of very efficient causes. Not so, however, with the child who from the first hour of its birth has been nourished upon artificial food. Teething under such circumstances is always attended with more or less of disturbance of the frame, and disease of the most dangerous character sometimes ensues. this age, too, that all infectious and eruptive fevers are most prevalent; worms often begin to form, and diarrhoea, thrush, rickets, and cutaneous eruptions, manifest themselves, and the foundation of strumous disease is originated or developed. A judicious management of diet will prevent some of these complaints, and mitigate the violence of others when they occur.

The kind of diet most suitable under the different complaints to which infants are liable. — Artificial food, from mismanagement and other causes, will now and then disagree with the infant. The stomach and bowels are thus deranged, and medicine is resorted to, and again and again the same thing occurs.

This is wrong, and but too frequently productive of serious and lasting mischief. Alteration of diet, rather than the exhibition of medicine, should, under these circumstances, be re

lied on for remedying the evil. Calomel, and such like remedies, "the little powders of the nursery," ought not to be given on every trivial occasion. More mischief has been effected, and more positive disease produced, by the indiscriminate use of the above powerful drug, either alone or in combination with other drastic purgatives, than would be credited. Purgative medicines ought at all times to be exhibited with caution to an infant, for so delicate and susceptible is the structure of its alimentary canal, that disease is but too frequently caused by that which was resorted to in the first instance as a remedy. The bowels should always be kept free; but then it must be by the mildest and least irritating means.

It is a very desirable thing, then, to correct the disordered conditions of the digestive organs of an infant, if possible, without medicine; and much may be done by changing the nature, and sometimes by simply diminishing the quantity of food.

A diarrhoea, or looseness of the bowels, may frequently be checked by giving, as the diet, sago thoroughly boiled in very weak beef-tea, with the addition of a little milk. The same purpose is frequently to be answered by two thirds of arrow-root with one third of milk, or simply thin arrow-root made with water only; or, if these fail Hard's Farinaceous Food mixed with boiled milk.

Costiveness of the bowels may frequently be

removed by changing the food to tops and bottoms steeped in boiling water, and a small quantity of milk added. Or Densham's Farinaceous Food (which is a mixture of three parts of the best wheat flour and one part of the best barleymeal) may be used. The barley makes this preparation somewhat laxative. Mix a table spoonful with a small quantity of cold water, add half a pint of boiling water, constantly stirring, then boil eight minutes, strain through a sieve, add a small quantity of unboiled, pure, and fresh cow's milk, a little loaf sugar, and a few grains of salt.

Flatulence and griping generally arise from an undue quantity of food, which passing undigested into the bowels, they are thus irritated and disturbed. This This may be cured by abstinence alone. The same state of things may be caused by the food being over-sweetened sometimes from its not being prepared fresh at every meal, or even from the nursing-bottle or vessel in which the food is given not having been perfectly clean. In this case weak chicken-broth or beef-tea freed from fat, and thickened with soft boiled rice or arrowroot, may be given.

SECT. V.- DIET AND REGIMEN OF CHILDHOOD.

CHILDHOOD, as has been before intimated, extends from about the second to the seventh or