The brain in infants is very moist, and hath many excrements which nature cannot send out at the proper passages; they get often to the ears, and there cause pains, flux of blood, with inflammation, and matter with pain; this in children is hard to be known, as they have no other way to make it known but by constant crying; you will perceive them ready to feel their ears themselves, but will not let others touch them if they can prevent it; and sometimes you may discern the parts above the ears to be very red. These pains, if let alone, are of dangerous consequences, because they may bring forth watchings and epilepsy; for the moisture breeds worms there, and fouls the spongy bones, and by degrees causes incurable deafness. _Cure._—Allay the pain with convenient speed, but have a care of using strong remedies. Therefore only use warm milk about the ears, with the decoction of poppy tops, or oil of violets: to take away the moisture, use honey of roses, and let aquamollis be dropped into the ears; or take virgin honey, half an ounce; red wine two ounces; alum, saffron, saltpetre, each a drachm; mix them at the fire; or drop in hemp seed oil with a little wine. SECT. VI. _Of Redness, and Inflammation of the Buttocks, Groin, and the Thighs of a Young Child._ If there be no care taken to change and wash the child’s bed as soon as it is fouled with the excrements, and to keep the child very clean, the acrimony will be sure to cause redness, and beget a smarting in the buttocks, groin, and thighs of the child, which, by reason of the pain will afterwards be subject to inflammations, which follow the sooner, through the delicacy and tenderness of their skin, from which the outward skin of the body is in a short time separated and worn away. _Cure._—First, keep the child cleanly: and, secondly, take off the sharpness of its urine. As to keeping it cleanly, she must be a sorry nurse that needs to be taught how to do it; for if she lets it have but dry, clean, and warm beds, and clothes, as often and as soon as it has fouled and wet them, either by its urine or excrements, it will be sufficient. And as to taking off the sharpness of the child’s urine, that must be done by the nurse’s taking a cool diet, that her milk may have the same quality; and therefore she ought to abstain from all things that may tend to heat it. But besides these cooling and drying remedies are requisite to be applied to the inflamed parts; therefore let the parts be bathed with plantain water, with a fourth of lime-water added to it, each time the child’s excrements are wiped off; and if the pain be very great, let it only be fomented with lukewarm milk. Some kind of drying powder, or a little milldust strewed upon the parts affected, may be proper enough, and is used by many women. Also, unguentum album, or diapampholigos, spread upon a small piece of leather, in form of a plaster, will not be amiss.