For the first three or four months of an infant's life the best food is breast-milk alone. If for any reason this cannot be given, asses' milk is the best substitute. Next to this cow's milk, diluted with an equal proportion of water in which half a teaspoonful of powdered sugar of milk has been dissolved. Cow's milk differs from human milk in its excess of cream and curd. The cream consists almost wholly of oil globules. The addition of a solution of sugar-of-milk reduces it in one direction, and raises it in another, to the level of human milk; thus, sugar-of-milk contains all the saline mat- ters of the milk from which it was made; therefore, by its ad- dition (with water) to cow's milk, while the curd and oil are diluted, the deficiency of the salts is supplied, and thereby its l^IEDICINAL. 413 composition is as nearly as possible equalized or assimilated ©ne to the other. Most infants will thrive well on this hand-feeding, but there are two points of essential importance to its success. One is the giving the food with regularity. For the first two or three weeks the child should be fed every two hours during the day, and once or twice in the course of the night. The interval should gradually be lengthened after the month. The same rule as to time should be observed, whatever be the food, whether breast-milk or any substitute. Feeding-bottles Objectionable. — The next point, and one (if possible) more important, is that the feeding-bottle should be most scrupulously cleaned each time immediately after feeding, or small quantities of milk remaining in the tube or teat will become sour. The minutest particle of sour milk taken into the stomach with the other will act after the manner of a ferment, and favor the turning sour of the whole quantity. It should, however, here be noted, that it does not follow that, because when a child vomits its milk it is found curdled, therefore the whole has been sour at the time of taking it. The first step in the digestion of the milk is that it is curdled by the gastric juice of the stomach, and afterwards dissolved by it. This process, however, is very different from the curd- ling of milk by its having turned sour out of the stomach, and it has a very different result in the process of digestion. There is another grave objection to these tubes — they en- gender and foster idleness on the part of the nurse. It is a common practice to put an infant into its bed or cradle, with the teat in its mouth and the bottle in bed, and there to leave it to suckle itself to sleep; which it generally does, sucking the while even after it has fallen asleep and its bottle is emptied. The child goes on sucking at the tube, but getting no food; the infant, in popular phrase, "sucks in wind." If it does not ex- actly suck the wind, its fruitless sucking at a piece of india- rubber keeps up secretion of gastric juice in the stomach. This, having no food to act upon, acts abnormally upon the stomach itself, and sets up various disorders of that organ and of the intestines. Such a mode of nursing is little better than the " Gampish " trick of sticking into the child's mouth a raisin in a piece of muslin to **keep it quiet." They are alike occasions to evade the duty of really hand-nursing and carry- ing the child in arms.

AI-modernized reading of the original text

For the first three or four months of an infant's life the best food is breast-milk alone. If for any reason this cannot be given, asses' milk is the best substitute. Next to this cow's milk, diluted with an equal proportion of water in which half a teaspoonful of powdered sugar of milk has been dissolved. Cow's milk differs from human milk in its excess of cream and curd. The cream consists almost wholly of oil globules. The addition of a solution of sugar-of-milk reduces it in one direction, and raises it in another, to the level of human milk; thus, sugar-of-milk contains all the saline matters of the milk from which it was made; therefore, by its addition (with water) to cow's milk, while the curd and oil are diluted, the deficiency of the salts is supplied, and thereby its MEDICINAL. 413 composition is as nearly as possible equalized or assimilated ©ne to the other. Most infants will thrive well on this hand-feeding, but there are two points of essential importance to its success. One is the giving the food with regularity. For the first two or three weeks the child should be fed every two hours during the day, and once or twice in the course of the night. The interval should gradually be lengthened after the month. The same rule as to time should be observed, whatever be the food, whether breast-milk or any substitute. Feeding-bottles Objectionable. — The next point, and one (if possible) more important, is that the feeding-bottle should be most scrupulously cleaned each time immediately after feeding, or small quantities of milk remaining in the tube or teat will become sour. The minutest particle of sour milk taken into the stomach with the other will act after the manner of a ferment, and favor the turning sour of the whole quantity. It should, however, here be noted, that it does not follow that, because when a child vomits its milk it is found curdled, therefore the whole has been sour at the time of taking it. The first step in the digestion of the milk is that it is curdled by the gastric juice of the stomach, and afterwards dissolved by it. This process, however, is very different from the curdling of milk by its having turned sour out of the stomach, and it has a very different result in the process of digestion. There is another grave objection to these tubes — they engender and foster idleness on the part of the nurse. It is a common practice to put an infant into its bed or cradle, with the teat in its mouth and the bottle in bed, and there to leave it to suckle itself to sleep; which it generally does, sucking the while even after it has fallen asleep and its bottle is emptied. The child goes on sucking at the tube, but getting no food; the infant, in popular phrase, "sucks in wind." If it does not exactly suck the wind, its fruitless sucking at a piece of indiarubber keeps up secretion of gastric juice in the stomach. This, having no food to act upon, acts abnormally upon the stomach itself, and sets up various disorders of that organ and of the intestines. Such a mode of nursing is little better than the " Gampish " trick of sticking into the child's mouth a raisin in a piece of muslin to **keep it quiet." They are alike occasions to evade the duty of really hand-nursing and carrying the child in arms.

The housekeeper's companion