The diseases of children : a short introduction to their study / by James Frederic Goodhart.
- Sir James Goodhart, 1st Baronet
- Date:
- 1891
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The diseases of children : a short introduction to their study / by James Frederic Goodhart. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.
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![i ij the niglit. Even when infiints are some months old, j| one meal in the middle of the night may be necessaiy, II and to this thei-e is but little objection. The diges- r tion of a liealthy infant is rapiil, and while food 41 should never be given too often, any lengthened bust is ei|ually to be avoided. ' The interval between meals is to be strictly en- forced for all infants that ai-e healthy. Children are creatures of habit, and soon learn their proper meal- times. They will often indeeil, begin to cry punc- tually at the time. Hut they are easily educated also in faulty habits. It is the custom of many mothers tf) pacify crying at all times with the breast or the bottle—and a more pernicious practice it is impossible to conceive. The more the crying the more the feed- ing, and the more the feeding the more the infant r] cries, and what between crying and suckling the day tj and night are spent in misery. These are the cases »; which form the great majority of the thin, pining, j' pitiable mites who are brought to a. liospital for “ con- I sumjition of the bow'els,” but with bad feeding only to blame. And what w(mder ; if grown-up persons were to be always eating, who among ns would not be dys- j)eptic, and who would not be quite as misei'able if less demonsti'ative than the infant! Now let it be remem- bered that there are many children who, in the first t month or two of life, when the stomach is, as it were, I unfolding to its duties, cry a good deal. They are a i source of great di.scomfoi-t and pain in a, household— i. sucking at .something will almost certainly ipiiet them, iand other methods of treatment, food, doctoring, and so forth, often fa,il. It is very impoiiant in such cases to inqiress upon the mother a.nd nurse that, if they quiet a child by illicit means, they are but .sowing the wind to reaj) an inevitable whirlwind. If tiuw bear with it for a shoit tiiiHg the child soon becomes accustomed to the hala’ts enfoi-ced ; it must slee[> after a while, and the lirst lesson of its life is learned. \\ henever there is much crying, howevi'r, attention](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b24990449_0047.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
