Children brought up on an artificial diet are very liable to indigestion and bowel complaints; indeed none more so: and it is from these affections that so many of these infants perish. When, then, it is absolutely necessary from untoward circumstances to have recourse to this mode of nourishing the child, the rules and regulations laid down in the section on "Artificial Feeding" must be most strictly followed out, if the parent would hope to avoid disease and rear her child.[FN#37] And if these affections should at any time unfortunately manifest themselves, the mother ought carefully and diligently to examine whether the plan of feeding pursued is in every particular correct, particularly bearing in mind that the two causes most frequently productive of disorder in the child are overfeeding and the exhibition of unsuitable food--the two grand errors of the nursery. These results, however, have already been sufficiently dwelt upon as likely to take place at weaning, and they may of course occur to a child who is brought up on an artificial diet at any period. [FN#37] See page 34. MATERNAL TREATMENT OF THE DISORDERS OF THE STOMACH AND BOWELS. As must have been already seen, the maternal treatment chiefly consists in the removal of the cause of the disorder; medicine may occasionally be exhibited by the mother, but its use in her hands must be very limited indeed. Unfortunately the general resource and only remedy of most mothers in affections of the stomach and bowels is an aperient, and a combination containing calomel is the one too frequently selected. The primary cause of the disorder is undetected, and consequently no measures taken for its removal, but purgative powder after purgative powder is given, the evil being supposed to rest in the bowels alone, and that such means must eventually get rid of it. The mother is not aware all this time that the real source of the derangement is probably in the diet itself; that there is some error here, and that unless this is corrected, the remedies must be worse than useless. The consequence of such a plan of proceeding is usually very sad; a confirmed and obstinate diarrhoea but too commonly ensues, and the infant is sometimes reduced to the last extremity.