fact is also deserving of attention, as corroborating what I have elsewhere said in regard to the necessity of proper management during the period of transition from youth to manhood--a period during two or three years of which more good or more mischief may be done to the human constitution than during almost any other ten years of life.[45] That, in times past, pressmen have suffered at least as much from their own mismanagement as from the nature of their employment, is rendered probable by their proverbial dissipation. In utter ignorance of the structure and laws of the animal economy, they not unnaturally sought to relieve the exhaustion under which they suffered, by the stimulus of spirituous and other intoxicating liquors, instead of seeking it--where only it can be effectually obtained, and at a cheaper rate--in a more wholesome and nourishing diet. It is gratifying to perceive, however, that in this, as in many other trades, the progress of knowledge is already leading to the prevalence of more rational ideas, and to the consequent formation of better habits. There is no period of life during which it is of greater importance to follow the intentions of Nature in the regulation of diet, both as to quantity and quality, than during the earliest part of childhood; for at no period is the neglect of them more fatal. Surprise is sometimes expressed at the number of children who are carried off before completing their first or second year; but when we consider the defective education and entire ignorance of the human economy, not only of the nurses and servants to whose care the young are entrusted, but of the parents themselves, our wonder ought to become greater that so many survive than that so many die. There is perhaps not one mother in ten thousand, who, before becoming such, has ever inquired into the nature and wants of the newly born infant, or knows on what principles its treatment ought to be directed; and hence the hurtful and superstitious notions of the human economy which still linger in the nursery, long after they have ceased to prevail in the world of science.