A hand-book of nursing for family and general use.

Date:: [1878], ©1878

Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A hand-book of nursing for family and general use. Source: Wellcome Collection.

242/274 (page 238)

What care should be given to utensils and feeding-bottlei. The utensils used for preparing and giving the nourish- ment must be free from all foreign matter. It is well to provide several nursing-bottles, so that while one is in use the others may be thoroughly cleansed by prolonged immersion in boiling water. Before use, also, each should be steeped for a moment in boiling water to remove all dust or vegetable germs that may have accumulated upon it. The same suggestion holds good with regard to all other utensils used of whatever sort. A rule that holds good for a child brought up by hand. It has been remarked that a child at the breast requires no other food than the milk until the teeth begin to appear, that then artificial nourishment may be given, in shape of milk, weak broths, and gruels, which are increased gradually in strength and consistence the more the teeth develop; the same rule applies to infants brought up by hand. What the nurse may do for the new-born baby artificially fed. An infant brought up by hand needs to have the me- conium artificially removed, since it obtains neither from the wet-nurse nor the cow's milk the cathartic principle of primitive breast-milk. The nurse may safely do this upon her own responsi- bility, by giving to the child half a teaspoonful of aro- matic syrup of rhubarb every three hours until the meconium is evacuated and the faeces becomes of a natu- ral yellow color.