rity: many have
such an infatuated idea of the _healing excellence_ of castor-oil, that
they would administer a dose of this disgusting grease twice a week, and
think they had done a meritorious service to the child. The next point
is, to watch carefully, lest, to insure a night's sleep for herself, she
does not dose the infant with Godfrey's cordial, syrup of poppies, or
some narcotic potion, to insure tranquillity to the one and give the
opportunity of sleep to the other. The fact that scores of nurses keep
secret bottles of these deadly syrups, for the purpose of stilling their
charges, is notorious; and that many use them to a fearful extent, is
sufficiently patent to all.

2444. It therefore behoves the mother, while obliged to trust to a
nurse, to use her best discretion to guard her child from the
unprincipled treatment of the person she must, to a certain extent,
depend upon and trust; and to remember, in all cases, rather than resort
to castor-oil or sedatives, to consult a medical man for her infant in
preference to following the counsel of her nurse.

THE REARING, MANAGEMENT, AND DISEASES OF INFANCY AND CHILDHOOD.

CHAPTER XLII.

Physiology of Life, as illustrated by Respiration, Circulation, and
Digestion.

2445. The infantine management of children, like the mother's love for
her offspring, seems to be born with the child, and to be a direct
intelligence of Nature. It may thus, at first sight, appear as
inconsistent and presumptuous to tell a woman how to rear her infant as
to instruct her in the manner of loving it. Yet, though Nature is
unquestionably the best nurse, Art makes so admirable a foster-mother,
that no sensible woman, in her novitiate of parent, would refuse the
admonitions of art, or the teachings of experience, to consummate her
duties of nurse. It is true that, in a civilized state of society, few
young wives reach the epoch that makes them mothers without some
insight, traditional or practical, into the management of infants:
consequently, the cases wherein a woman is left to her own unaided
intelligence, or what, in such a case, may be called instinct, and
obliged to trust to the promptings of nature alone for the well-being of
her child, are very rare indeed. Again, every woman is not gifted with
the same physical ability for the harassing duties of a mother; and
though Nature, as a general rule, has endowed all female creation with
the attributes necessary to that most b