The recommendations given above are based on a long experience, and the simplicity, cheapness, and facility of preparation of the articles. The substitutes offered for sale under the title of infant foods are in part worthless, all of them expensive when compared with the simple articles recommended by me, and not recognizable as to their uniformity and compounds. But no matter how appropriate my mixture may be, it is always for the young infant to be considered as a makeshift. It is to be used as a representative of mother's milk only when this cannot be had. Therefore it is better to alternate with breast-milk when this is secreted in but an insufficient quantity. Some good breast-milk is better than none at all; but with this proviso, that it _is_ good. There are some milks either too watery or too dense and white. The former will produce diarrhoea, the latter hard and dense curd. The former may be improved by feeding and strengthening an anæmic and overworked mother; the latter, by giving the baby, before each nursing, a tablespoonful of a mixture of barley-water and lime-water, or, when it produces constipation, lime-water and thoroughly sweetened oatmeal-water. The cases in which breast-milk, such as can be had, is not digested by the infant are rare, but they will occur. In them the proper substitute will yield a better result than mother's milk; for mother's milk will not always be a boon, and must then be dispensed with. Particularly is this so when it is too old. Weaning ought to take place when the first group or the first two groups of teeth have made their appearance. After that time mother's milk is no longer the proper food, and instead of preventing indigestion and sickness it is a frequent cause of them and of rachitis. Instead of muscle, it will then give fat, and the large fontanels and big head, the paleness of the rotund cheeks, the flabbiness of the soft abdomen and thighs, will tell the story of rachitical disease slowly engendered by the persistent employment of an improper article of food. I cannot insist too often on this, that rachitis may develop with increasing weight, {161} and that the use of the scales alone is no means of ascertaining the healthy condition of a baby. As much harm, therefore, can be done by weaning too late as by so doing too early or too abruptly.