healthful circulation. The
only precaution necessary is to avoid letting the child suck the milk
that has lain long in the breast, or is heated by excessive action.

2479. Every mother who can, should be provided with a breast-pump, or
glass tube, to draw off the superabundance that has been accumulating in
her absence from the child, or the first gush excited by undue exertion:
the subsequent supply of milk will be secreted under the invigorating
influence of a previous healthy stimulus.

2480. As the first milk that is secreted contains a large amount of the
saline elements, and is thin and innutritious, it is most admirably
adapted for the purpose Nature designed it to fulfil,--that of an
aperient; but which, unfortunately, it is seldom permitted, in our
artificial mode of living, to perform.

2481. So opposed are we to the objectionable plan of physicking new-born
children, that, unless for positive illness, we would much rather advise
that medicine should be administered _through_ the mother for the first
eight or ten weeks of its existence. This practice, which few mothers
will object to, is easily effected by the parent, when such a course is
necessary for the child, taking either a dose of castor-oil, half an
ounce of tasteless salts (the phosphate of soda), one or two
teaspoonfuls of magnesia, a dose of lenitive electuary, manna, or any
mild and simple aperient, which, almost before it can have taken effect
on herself, will exhibit its action on her child.

2482. One of the most common errors that mothers fall into while
suckling their children, is that of fancying they are always hungry, and
consequently overfeeding them; and with this, the great mistake of
applying the child to the breast on every occasion of its crying,
without investigating the cause of its complaint, and, under the belief
that it wants food, putting the nipple into its crying mouth, until the
infant turns in revulsion and petulance from what it should accept with
eagerness and joy. At such times, a few teaspoonfuls of water, slightly
chilled, will often instantly pacify a crying and restless child, who
has turned in loathing from the offered breast; or, after imbibing a few
drops, and finding it not what nature craved, throws back its head in
disgust, and cries more petulantly than before. In such a case as this,
the young mother, grieved at her baby's rejection of the tempting
present, and distressed at its cries, and in terror of som