It should be needless in these days to warn mothers that all “soothing syrups” are extremely harmful and even dangerous preparations; but there is another preparation in almost universal use, which, in a smaller way, does a great deal of harm. I allude to the abuse of dill water and similar pungent stomachics. The usual pretext for its administration is that the baby has got what is popularly termed “wind in the stomach,” which may mean merely indigestion, due, in all probability, to the use of some patented abomination in the way of “infants’ foods,” containing farinaceous material; or that, as evidenced by belching, there really is gas in stomach produced by fermentation, or by sucking in air from the use of a “comforter.” Now the dill water will no doubt temporarily relieve the pain, but it will rather aggravate the malady than cure the condition that causes it; as the remedy is of exactly the same character as the nip of gin which Mrs. Gamp found so useful in soothing her “spasms,” and is probably even less suited for babies than the gin was to the good lady so inimitably portrayed by Dickens. It is astonishing how mothers, who would exclaim with horror at a few wholesome grains of pepper to season the breakfast egg of a child of five or six, will go on giving a new-born baby dose after dose of what is much the same thing as a very pungent liqueur. Should the pain be really due to “wind,” as shown by belching, some unirritating antiseptic such as a grain or two of resorcin will rapidly check the fermentation that is producing the gas, and so cure the disease. Though comparatively little used for this purpose, the writer has found this drug most useful in these little troubles, and has found that even infants of but a few days old tolerate it perfectly. If, on the other hand, the pain be due to indigestion, the trouble is probably caused by the character of the food, and an effort should be made to find something that agrees better. Probably the commonest cause of these disorders is the use of the numerous much-advertised “infants’ foods,” most of which contain farinaceous material of some sort. Now young infants cannot digest starchy matter of any kind, and the only proper food for them is milk. When the milk of the lower animals is used it is of course desirable to modify it, so that its composition may be made to more closely resemble that of human milk; and this in the case of cow’s milk is effected by diluting the milk and adding a little sugar, preferably milk sugar. Again the tendency of cow’s milk to clot in large mass has to be neutralised by the addition of some material that will prevent this, and the general ban against farinaceous materials need not extend to the use of the deservedly popular barley water for this purpose, as the amount of starchy matter it contains is too small to be harmful.