Mrs. Hale's Receipts for the Million: Containing Four Thousand Five Hundred and Forty-five Receipts, Facts, Directions, etc. in the Useful, Ornamental, and Domestic Arts — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
Mrs. Hale's Receipts for the Million: Containing Four Thousand Five Hundred and Forty-five Receipts, Facts, Directions, etc. in the Useful, Ornamental, and Domestic Arts
John Stuart Mill · en
839. _Weaning_ of children should not take place under six months,
if the mother be in health, nor be deferred beyond nine months. It
cannot be too frequently impressed on the mind of the parent, that
the future health and strength of her child depend on a due supply
of the food which nature has provided. Regarding her own health, the
chances are that it will be improved--at all events, it is incumbent
on her to make the experiment; if her strength falls off, she may at
any time retire from the effort, and engage a wet-nurse.
This _foster-parent_ should not be more than thirty years of age,
nor should her milk be more than three months old. She should be in
health, free from scorbutic or scrofulous taints, from cutaneous
scurf, or eruptions, perfectly clean in her person, and extremely
neat in her management of whatever concerns the child. She must be
sober and temperate: her diet should consist of a due proportion
of bread, fresh meat, and vegetables; her drink, tea, chocolate,
and milk and water; but on no consideration either wine or any
other spirituous liquors. These, if drank by the nurse, will prove
injurious to the child.
840. _Proper Medicines for Infants._--Nature has not only provided
food for infants, but likewise given to them a constitution capable
of correcting those slight deviations from health, to which alone
they are liable when properly nursed. This has induced many to
assert that medicines are not required in the nursery: perhaps the
assertion might be correct, if children were suffered to remain in
a state of nature: the further they are removed from it, the evils
they have to contend with bear a proportionate increase. As most of
their complaints arise from a want of attention to their food, to
air, and exercise, by a prompt and skilful use of medicine, these
complaints may be removed; therefore, it is not the use but the abuse
of medicine that should be avoided. If a child be tormented by a pin
running into the flesh, no one would contend against the removal of
the pin.
The diseases to which children are liable, are sore eyes, sore ears,
sore head, scald head, sickness and vomiting, thrush, red gum,
yellow gum, pain in the bowels, diarrhea, dentition, chilblains,
rickets, worms, scrofula, catarrh, cough, measles, &c.