But of this enough: we now proceed to the management and education of children, beginning with their earliest infancy. In old times the women of Greece always suckled their own offspring, and for the performance of this office they were excellently adapted by nature,[407] since they had no sooner become mothers than their breasts filled so copiously with milk than it not only flowed through the nipple, but likewise transpired through the whole bosom. On the little derangements of the system peculiar to nurses the Greeks entertained many superstitious opinions; for instance, they conceived those thread-like indurations which sometimes appear in the breasts to be caused by swallowing hairs, which afterwards come forth with the milk, on which account the disorder was called Trichiasis.[408] The nourishment supplied by mothers so robust and lactiferous was often so rich and abundant as, like over-feeding, to cause spasms and convulsions, supposed to be most violent when they happened during the full moon, and began in the back. The usual remedy among nurses would appear to have been wine, since Aristotle,[409] in speaking of the disorder, observes that white, particularly if diluted with water, is less injurious than red, though even from the former he thought it better to abstain. The administering of aperient medicines and the absence from everything that could cause flatulence, he considered the only safe treatment. Nurses, however, sometimes placed much reliance on the brains of a rabbit.[410] Footnote 407: When the case happened to be otherwise the remedies recommended by physicians were numerous, among which was the halimos, a prickly shrub found growing along the northern shores of Crete.—Dioscor. i. 120. Tournefort. i. 44. Footnote 408: Arist. Hist. An. vii. 10. Foës. Œconom. Hippoc. v. Τριχίασις. Footnote 409: Hist. An. vii. 11. Footnote 410: Dioscor. ii. 21. In Plato’s Republic the nurses were to live apart in a distinct quarter of the city, and suckle indiscriminately all the children that were to be preserved; no mother being permitted to know her own child.[411] Footnote 411: Plat. Rep. v. t. vi. p. 236.—The desire of the philosopher was, that the people, or the state, should be regarded as the father of the child. Among our ancestors illegitimate children were denominated “sons of the people,” which was then thought equivalent to being the sons of nobody. Hence the following distich:— Cui pater est populus, pater est sibi nullus et omnis, Cui pater est populus, non habet ipse patrem. Fortescue, Laud. Legg. Angl. c. 40.