Women, especially in a low station, who act as nurses, are strongly addicted to the practice of drinking porter and ales, for the purpose of augmenting their milk. This very common custom cannot be sufficiently deprecated. It is often pernicious to both parties, and may lay the foundation of a multitude of diseases in the infant. The milk, which ought to be bland and unirritating, acquires certain heating qualities, and becomes deteriorated to a degree of which those unaccustomed to investigate such matters have little conception. The child nursed by a drunkard is hardly ever healthy. It is, in a particular manner, subject to derangements of the digestive organs, and convulsive affections. With regard to the latter, Dr. North[50] remarks, that he has seen them almost instantly removed by the child being transferred to a temperate woman. I have observed the same thing, not only in convulsive cases, but in many others. Nor are liquors the only agents whose properties are communicable to the nursling. It is the same with regard to opium, tobacco, and other narcotics. Purgatives transmit their powers in a similar manner, so much so, that nothing is more common than for the child suckled by a woman who has taken physic, to be affected with bowel complaint. No woman is qualified to be a nurse, unless strictly sober; and though stout children are sometimes reared by persons who indulge to a considerable extent in liquor, there can be no doubt that they are thereby exposed to risk, and that they would have had a much better chance of doing well, if the same quantity of milk had been furnished by natural means. If a woman cannot afford the necessary supply without these indulgences, she should give over the infant to some one who can, and drop nursing altogether. The only cases in which a moderate portion of malt liquor is justifiable, are when the milk is deficient, and the nurse averse or unable to put another in her place. Here, of two evils, we choose the least, and rather give the infant milk of an inferior quality, than endanger its health, by weaning it prematurely, or stinting it of its accustomed nourishment. Connected with this subject is the practice of administering stimulating liquors to children. This habit is so common in some parts of Scotland, that infants of a few days old are often forced to swallow raw whisky. In like manner, great injury is often inflicted upon children by the frequent administration of laudanum, paregoric, Godfrey’s Cordial, and other preparations of opium. The child in a short time becomes pallid, emaciated, and fretful, and is subject to convulsive attacks, and every variety of disorder in the stomach and bowels. Vomiting, diarrhœa, and other affections of the digestive system ensue, and atrophy, followed by death, is too often the consequence.