This I mention first, as it is often the first and most common distemper which happens to little infants, after their birth; many children being so troubled therewith, that it causes them to cry day and night and at last die of it. The cause of it for the most part comes from the sudden change of nourishment, for having always received it from the umbilical vessel whilst in the mother's womb, they come on a sudden not only to change the manner of receiving it, but the nature and quality of what they received, as soon as they are born; for instead of purified blood only, which was conveyed to them by means of the umbilical vein, they are now obliged to be nourished by their mother's milk, which they suck with their mouths, and from which are engendered many excrements, causing gripes and pains; and not only because it is not so pure as the blood with which it was nourished in the womb, but because the stomach and the intestines cannot make a good digestion, being unaccustomed to it. It is sometimes caused also by a rough phlegm, and sometimes by worms; for physicians affirm that worms have been bred in children even in their mother's belly. _Cure_. The remedy must be suited to the cause. If it proceed from the too sudden change of nourishment, the remedy must be to forbear giving the child suck for some days, lest the milk be mixed with phlegm, which is then in the stomach corrupt; and at first it must suck but little, until it is accustomed to digest it. If it be the excrements in the intestines, which by their long stay increase their pains, give them at the month a little oil of sweet almonds and syrup of roses; if it be worms, lay a cloth dipped in oil of wormwood mixed with ox-gall, upon the belly, or a small cataplasm, mixed with the powder of rue, wormwood, coloquintida, aloes, and the seeds of citron incorporated with ox-gall and the powder of lupines. Or give it oil of sweet almonds and syrup of roses; if it be worms, lay a cloth, dipped in oil of wormwood mixed with ox-gall, upon the belly, or a small cataplasm mixed with the powder of rue, wormwood, coloquintida, aloes, and the seeds of citron incorporated with ox-gall and the powder of lupines. Or give it oil of sweet almonds with sugar-candy, and a scruple of aniseed; it purgeth new-born babes from green cholera and stinking phlegm, and, if it be given with sugar-pap, it allays the griping pains of the belly. Also anoint the belly with oil of dill, or lay pelitory stamped with oil of camomile to the belly. SECT. II.--_Of Weakness In Newly-born Infants._