The maternal management of children in health and disease / Thoroughly revised by Robert W. Parker.

  • Bull, Thomas
Date:
1877
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The maternal management of children in health and disease / Thoroughly revised by Robert W. Parker. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    341/408 (page 321)
    constitution, she must obtain a wet-nurse possessing such qualifications. The breast-milk, and nothing besides, must form the nutriment of the child for at least nine months; and if the infant is delicate or strumous, it will be prudent to continue it even three months longer. When the period arrives for the sub- stitution of artificial food, it must be carefully selected ; it must be appropriate to the advancing age of the child; nutritious and unirritating. Good air and daily exercise, and the bath or sponging, are of much im- portance ; in short, all those general measures which have a tendency to promote and maintain the tone and general health of the system, and thus induce a vigorous and healthy constitution, and to which reference has been so fully made in the second chapter of this work, must be strictly regarded and followed out by the parent. The condition of the digestive organs must be the mother’s especial care. Costiveness must be guarded against; and if at any time the secretions from the bowels indicate any derangement, the medi- cal attendant must be applied to, that appropriate remedies may without delay be exhibited. Their dis- ordered condition is frequently productive of head- disease. Again and again have I clearly traced the origin of the complaint, of which I am now writ- ing, as directly resulting from disorder of the diges- tive apparatus. To a child thus predisposed to water in the head, the healthy state of these organs is not only of first consequence, but any deviation from health to be dreaded, to be immediately attended to, and guarded against in future; and, as there is a great liability to these attacks at the time of weaning, the above remarks especially apply to that period, when V