A few minutes after birth the infant discharges urine, and this generally when it feels the heat of the fire: and sometimes also the meconium or excrement which have been collected in the intestines during its residence in the matrix. This last evacuation is not always performed so soon, but if it does not happen in the course of the first day, the child is often affected with a pain in the bowels; in which case methods are taken to facilitate the discharge. The meconium is black, and when the infant is effectually eased of it, the subsequent stools are of a whitish cast. This change generally happens on the second or third day, and then the excrement becomes more foetid than the meconium; a proof that the bile and other bitter humours of the body begin to intermix with it. This fact tends to support our former remark, that the foetus did not receive any food by its mouth, but received all its nourishment by absorption. The infant is allowed time to throw off the slime and meconium, which are in its bowels and intestines, before it is allowed to suck. As these substances might sour the milk, and produce bad effects, it is first made to swallow a little wine and sugar, in order to fortify the stomach, and to procure such evacuations as may be necessary to prepare it for receiving and digesting its food; nor ought it to receive the breast till 10 or 12 hours after the birth. Hardly has the infant left the womb of its mother, and enjoyed the liberty of extending its limbs, when it is again put into a more cruel confinement. The head of the helpless infant is fixed to one position; its arms and legs put in strict bondage, and it is laced with bandages so strait as not to be able to move a single joint. Well is it when the compression is not so great as to obstruct the respiration, or that the midwife has taken the precaution to lay it upon its side, that the natural moisture may emit of itself from the mouth, since it is denied the power of turning its head in order to facilitate this emission. Do not then those nations act more wisely than we who cover or clothe their children without shackling them in swathing-bands? the Siamese, the Japanese, the Indians, the Negroes, the Savages of Canada, of Virginia, or Brazil, and almost all the inhabitants of South America, lay their infants naked upon a suspended bed of cotton or put them into their cradles lined with fur. Those practices are certainly liable to less inconveniences than ours. In swaddling a child, it is impossible but the restraint must give it uneasiness; and the efforts it makes to disentangle itself have a greater tendency to injure the form of the body, than any position it might assume was it left at full liberty. Swathing-bands may be compared to stays, which young girls are made to wear in order to preserve their shapes, but which nevertheless occasion more diseases and deformities than they are supposed to prevent.