I consider them as so much slow poison. Such things both cloy and weaken the stomach, and thereby take away the appetite, and thus debilitate the frame. Moreover "sweetmeats are coloured with poisonous pigments." A mother, surely, is not aware, that when she is giving her child Sugar Confectionery she is, in many cases, administering a deadly poison to him? "We beg to direct the attention of our readers to the Report of the Analytical Sanitary Commission, contained in the _Lancet_ of the present week (Dec. 18, 1858), on the pigments employed in colouring articles of Sugar Confectionery. From this report it appears that metallic pigments of a highly dangerous and even poisonous character, containing chromic acid, lead, copper, mercury, and arsenic, are commonly used in the colouring of such articles." If a child be never allowed to eat cakes and sweetmeats, he will consider a piece of dry bread a luxury, and will eat it with the greatest relish. 161. _Is bakers' or is home-made bread the most wholesome for a child_? Bakers' bread is certainly the lightest; and, if we could depend upon its being unadulterated, would, from its lightness, be the most wholesome; but as we cannot always depend upon bakers' bread, home-made bread, as a rule should be preferred. If it be at all heavy, a child must not be allowed to partake of it; a baker's loaf ought then to be sent for, and continued to be eaten until light home-made bread can be procured. Heavy bread is most indigestible. He must not be allowed to eat bread until it be two or three days old. If it be a week old, in cold weather, it will be the more wholesome. 162. _Do you approve either of caraway seeds or of currants in bread or in cakes--the former to disperse wind, the latter to open the bowels_? There is nothing better than plain bread: the caraway-seeds generally pass through the bowels undigested, and thus might irritate, and might produce, instead of disperse wind. [Footnote: Although caraway seeds _whole_ are unwholesome, yet caraway tea, made as recommended in a previous Conversation, is an excellent remedy to disperse wind.] Some mothers put currants in cakes, with a view of opening the bowels of their children; but they only open them by disordering them. 163. _My child has an antipathy to certain articles of diet: what would you advise to be done_?