depends, it must be for the mother to see that appropriate local
measures are adopted. One point of considerable moment, and to which
less care than it deserves is usually paid, is the removing from the
mouth, each time after the infant has been fed, of all remains of the
milk or other food. For this purpose whenever the least sign of thrush
appears, the mouth should be carefully wiped out with a piece of soft
rag dipped in a little warm water every time after food has been given.
Supposing the attack to be but slight this precaution will of itself
suffice in many instances to remove all traces of the affection in two
or three days. If, however, there is much redness of the mouth, or if
the specks of thrush are numerous, some medicated application is
desirable.

The once popular honey and borax is not the best application, and this
for a reason which I will at once explain. The secretion of the mouth in
infants is acid, disease increases this acidity; and it has been found
that this acid state is not merely favourable to the increase of thrush,
but also to the development between the specks of thrush of a sort of
membrane formed by a peculiar microscopic growth, of whose existence,
just as of that of the phylloxera which destroys the vine, or the
muscardine which kills the silkworm, we were ignorant till brought to
light by recent scientific research.

You will therefore at once see why saccharine substances, apt as they
are to pass into a state of fermentation, are not suitable, and why it
is better to employ a solution of--

Borax, twenty grains
Glycerine, one teaspoonful
Water, an ounce.

Now and then the use once or twice a day in addition of a very weak
solution of caustic, as two grains of lunar caustic to an ounce of
water, in bad cases is necessary; but of this it must be left to the
doctor to decide.

TEETHING.--The transition is a very natural one by which we pass from
the study of the dangers and difficulties which attend the feeding and
rearing of young infants, to those which accompany _teething_.

The time of teething is looked forward to by most mothers with
undisguised apprehension, nurses attribute to it the most varied forms
of constitutional disturbance, and doctors constantly hold forth to
anxious parents the expectation that their child will have better health
when it has cut all its teeth. The time of teething, too, is in reality
one of more than ordinary peril,[9] though why it should be s