Aristotle's works:: Containing the Master-piece, Directions for Midwives, and Counsel and Advice to Child-bearing Women with Various Useful Remedies
Aristotle · en
But the chief thing must be the nurse’s taking great care to wrap the
inflamed parts with fine rags when she opens the child, that those parts
may not gather and be pained by rubbing together.
SECT. VII. _Of Vomiting in young Children._
Vomiting in children proceeds sometimes from too much milk, and
sometimes from bad milk, and as often from a moist loose stomach; for as
dryness retains, so looseness lets go. This is, for the most part,
without danger in children; and they that vomit from their birth are the
lustiest; for the stomach not being used to meat, and milk being taken
too much, crudities are easily bred, or the milk is corrupted; and it is
better to vomit these up than to keep them in; but if vomiting last
long, it will cause an atrophy, or consumption, for want of nourishment.
_Cure._—If this be from too much milk, that which is emitted is yellow
and green, or otherwise ill-coloured and stinking; in this case, mend
the milk, as has been shown before; cleanse the child with honey of
roses, and strengthen its stomach with syrup of milk and quinces made
into an electuary. If the humours be hot and sharp, give the syrup of
pomegranates, currants, and coral; and apply to the bowels the plaster
of bread, the stomach cerate, or bread dipped in hot wine; or oil of
mastich, quinces, mint, wormwood, each half an ounce; of nutmegs, by
expression, half a drachm; chemical oil of mint, three drops. Coral hath
an occult property to prevent vomiting, and is therefore hung about the
neck.
SECT. VIII. _Of breeding Teeth in young Children._
This is a very great yet necessary evil in all children, having a
variety of symptoms joined with it. They begin to come forth, not all at
once, but one after the other, about the sixth or seventh month; the
fore-teeth coming first, then the eye-teeth, and, last of all, the
grinders. The eye-teeth cause more pain to the child than any of the
rest, because they have a deep root, and a small nerve which hath
communication with that which makes the eye move.
In the breeding of the teeth, first they feel an itching in their gums,
then they are pierced as with a needle, and pricked by the sharp bones,
whence proceed great pains, watching, inflammation of the gums, fever,
looseness, and convulsions, especially when they breed their eye-teeth.
The signs when children breed their teeth are these.
1. It is known by the time, which is usually about the seventh month.
2. Their gums are swelled, and they feel a great heat there, with an
itching, which makes them put their fingers into their mouths to rub
them, a moisture also distils from the gums into the mouth, because of
the pains they feel there.
3. They hold the nipple faster than before.
4. The gums are white when the teeth begin to come; and the nurse, in
giving them suck, finds the mouth hotter, and that they are much
changed, crying every moment, and cannot sleep, or but very little at a
time.