The student's guide to diseases of children.
- Sir James Goodhart, 1st Baronet
- Date:
- 1886
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The student's guide to diseases of children. 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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![- J weeks of life it will require food sevei’al times during the night. Even when infants are some months old, one meal in the middle of the night may be necessary, and to this there is but little objection. The diges- tion of a healthy infant is rapid, and, while food should never be given too often, any lengthened fast is equally to be avoided. The interval between meals is to bo strictly en- forced for all infants that are healthy. Children arc creatures of habit, and soon learn their proper meal- times. They will often, indeed, begin to cry punctu- ally at the time. But they are easily educated also in faulty habits. It is the custom of many mothei's to pacify ciying at all times with the breast or the bottle—and a more pernicious practice it is impossible to conceive. The more the crying tlie more the feed- ing, and the more the feeding the more the infant cries, and what between crying and suckling the day and night are spent in misery. These are the case.s which form the great majority of the tliin, pining, pitiable mites who are bi-ought to a. hospital for con- sumption of the bowels,” but with bad feeding only to blame. And what wonder; if grown-up ])orsons were to be always eating, wlio among us would not be dys- peptic, and who would not be c[uite as mi.sevable if less demonstrative' than the infant! Now let it be I'emem- bered that there are many childi'cn who, in the first week or two of life, when the stomach is as it were unfolding to its duties, cry a good deal. Tliey are a source of great di.scomfort and pain in a homsehold— sucking at something will almost certainly ([uietthem, and other methods of treatment, food, doctoring, and so forth, often fail. It is ver\- important in such ca.ses to impress upon the mother and nurse that, if they (puet a child by this means, they an- but sowing the wind to reap an inevitable whirlwind. If they bear with it for a short time, the child soon becomes accustomed to the habits enforced ; it must sleep after a while, and the lirst lesson of its life is learned.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b24990462_0043.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
