crackers, bread, every patented food, and every article of diet containing starch, cannot and must not be depended on as food for very young infants. Creeping or walking children. must not be allowed to pick up unwholesome food.

RULE 8.-If the milk is known to be pure, it should have one-third part of hot water added to it, until the child is three months old; after this age the proportion of water should be gradually lessened. Each half pint of this food should be sweetened, either with a heaping dessertspoonful of sugar of milk, or with a teaspoonful of crushed sugar. When the heat of the weather is great, the milk may be given quite cold. Be sure that the milk is unskimmed; have it as fresh as possible, and brought very early in the morning. Before using the pans into which it is to be poured, always scald them with boiling suds. In very hot weather, boil the milk as soon as it comes, and at once put away the vessels holding it in the coolest place in the house-upon ice if it can be afforded, or down a well. Milk, carelessly allowed to stand in a warm room, soon spoils and becomes unfit for food.

RULE 9.-If the milk should disagree, a tablespoonful of lime water may be added to each bottleful. Whenever pure milk cannot be got, try the Condensed Milk, which often answers admirably. It is sold by all the leading druggists and grocers, and may be prepared by adding to ten tablespoonfuls of boiling water without sugar, one tablespoonful or more of the milk, according to the age of the child. Should this disagree, a teaspoon

To make lime-water, take a handful of quicklime, slake it and put it into a quart bottle full of soft water. Shake the bottle well, and then allow the undissolved portion of the lime to settle. Pour off the clear liquid when needed,, replacing it with more water, and afterwards shaking the bottle briskly.

ful of arrow-root, of sago, or of corn-starch may be cautiously added to a pint of the milk, as prepared under RULE 8. If milk in any shape cannot be digested, try, for a few days, pure cream diluted with three-fourths or four-fifths of water-returning to the milk as soon as possible.

RULE 10.-The nursing-bottle must be kept perfectly clean; otherwise the milk will turn sour, and the child will be made ill. After each meal, it should be emptied, rinsed out, taken apart, and the nipple and bottle placed in clean water, or in water to which a little soda has been added. It is a good plan to have two nursing-bottles, and to use them by turns. The best kind is the plain bottle with a rubber nipple and no tube.

RULE 11. Do not wean the child just before or during the hot weather; nor, as a rule, until after its second summer. If suckling disagrees with the mother, she must not wean the child, but feed it in part, out of a nursing-bottle, on such food as has been directed. How. ever small the supply of breast milk, provided that it agrees with the child, the mother should carefully keep it up against sickness; it alone will often save the life of a child when everything else fails. When the child is over six months old, the mother may save her strength by giving it one or two meals a day of stale bread and milk, which should be pressed through a sieve and put into a nursing-bottle. When from eight months to a year old, it may have also one meal a day of the yolk of a fresh and rare-boiled egg, or one of beef or muttonbroth into which stale bread has been crumbed. When older than this, it can have a little meat finely minced; but even then milk should be its principal food, and not such food as grown-up people eat.

To these recommendations may be added the following suggestions for the dietetic treatment of weakly and ema. ciated infants two or three months old, brought up by hand, in whom milk with lime-water excites griping and flatulence, with occasional attacks of vomiting and purging. In these cases we can often succeed in rendering the milk and lime-water digestible by adding an aromatic. Thus, to half a pint of cold milk add a teaspoonful of caraway seeds or chopped cinnamon, inclosed in a small muslin bag, and boil for five minutes. The bag is then withdrawn, and the lime-water, and milk-sugar, are afterwards added as usual.

If this do not succeed, one of the diets given below can be tried.

The child is to be fed every three hours from a feeding bottle with the following in alternate meals:

1. One teaspoonful of Liebig's food for infants dissolved in a teacupful of new milk and water (equal parts), with the addition of one tablespoonful of cinnamon-water. 2. A teacupful of fresh whey containing a teaspoonful of cream.

If the amount of milk given above cannot be digested, as often happens, the proportion of water used to dilute

1 Eustace Smith, Wasting Diseases of Infants and Children; London, 1870, p. 281.

2 Liebig's Food for Infants consists of half an ounce (rather more than a heaped-up tablespoonful) of wheaten-flour, an equal quantity (rather more than a heaped-up dessertspoonful) of malt flour, 7 grains of bicarbonate of potassium, and an ounce of water well mixed; to which is added five ounces of fresh milk. The whole is put on a gentle fire, until it begins to thicken, when it must be removed, stirred for several minutes, again heated and stirred till fluid, and then boiled, and passed through a sieve. It is slightly aperient, and, in cases of diarrhœa, prepared chalk, gr. xx., may be substituted for the bicarbonate of potas

the milk may be increased to two thirds; or in some of the meals the milk may be altogether omitted, using instead barley-water, or equal parts of barley-water and weak chicken broth, in which the Liebig's food can be dissolved.

In the above cases Prof. Charles D. Meigs' recommends the following: A scruple of gelatin (i. e., a square inch of the gelatin cake) is soaked in cold water, and is then boiled. for ten or fifteen minutes in half a pint of water until it dissolves. To this, at the termination of the boiling, are added, while stirring, three ounces of milk, and a teaspoonful of arrow-root, the latter having been previously mixed into a paste with a little cold water. Lastly, just before removal from the fire, half an ounce of cream is stirred up with the rest, and the whole is sweetened with loaf sugar. Of this food three or four ounces or more can be given every two or three hours from a feedingbottle.

These diets are suitable to all infants suffering from simple atrophy due to improper feeding. It will, however, be necessary to vary the quantities somewhat according to age. Thus, a child of six months old will usually be able to take a teaspoonful of Liebig's food for infants, dissolved in milk more or less diluted, for each meal.

For a child of the same age, Prof. Meigs's food may be strengthened by increasing the quantity of milk to six or ten ounces, and of cream to one or two ounces.

In all these cases of simple atrophy just mentioned, a wet nurse should be provided if possible.

1 J. F. Meigs and W. Pepper on Diseases of Children; Philada., 1877.

Brief Rules for Cases of Emergency in Children.'

1. If the child is suddenly attacked with vomiting, purging, and prostration, send for a doctor at once. In the mean time, put the child for a few minutes in a hot bath, then carefully wipe it dry with a warm towel, and wrap it in warm blankets. If its hands and feet are cold, bottles filled with hot water and wrapped in flannel should be laid against them.

2. A mush-poultice, or one made of flaxseed meal, to which one quarter part of mustard flour has been added, or flannels wrung out of hot vinegar and water, should be placed over the belly.

3. Five drops of brandy in a teaspoonful of water may be given every ten or fifteen minutes; but if the vomiting persist, give this brandy in the same quantity of milk and lime-water.

4. If the diarrhoea has just begun, or if it is caused by improper food, a teaspoonful of castor oil, or of the spiced syrup of rhubarb, should be given.

5. If the child has been fed partly on the breast and partly on other food, the mother's milk alone must now be used. If the child has been weaned, it should have its milk-food diluted with lime-water, or should have weak beef-tea, or chicken-water.

6. The child should be allowed to drink cold water freely.

7. The soiled diapers or the discharges should be at once removed from the room, but saved for the physician to examine at his visit.

These rules were also suggested by the Committee of the Obstetrical Society of Philadelphia, previously alluded to (p. 201).