comfort out of the question, we beg mothers to simplify their baby's
dress as much as possible; and not only to put on as little as is
absolutely necessary, but to make that as simple in its contrivance and
adjustment as it will admit of; to avoid belly-bands, rollers, girths,
and everything that can impede or confine the natural expansion of the
digestive organs, on the due performance of whose functions the child
lives, thrives, and develops its physical being.

REARING BY HAND.

Articles necessary, and how to use them,--Preparation of Foods.--
Baths.--Advantages of Rearing by Hand.

2497. As we do not for a moment wish to be thought an advocate for an
artificial, in preference to the natural course of rearing children, we
beg our renders to understand us perfectly on this head; all we desire
to prove is the fact that a child _can_ be brought up as well on a spoon
dietary as the best example to be found of those reared on the breast;
having more strength, indeed, from the more nutritious food on which it
lives. It will be thus less liable to infectious diseases, and more
capable of resisting the virulence of any danger that may attack it; and
without in any way depreciating the nutriment of its natural food, we
wish to impress on the mother's mind that there are many cases of
infantine debility which might eventuate in rickets, curvature of the
spine, or mesenteric disease, where the addition to, or total
substitution of, an artificial and more stimulating aliment, would not
only give tone and strength to the constitution, but at the same time
render the employment of mechanical means totally unnecessary. And,
finally, though we would never--where the mother had the strength to
suckle her child--supersede the breast, we would insist on making it a
rule to accustom the child as early as possible to the use of an
artificial diet, not only that it may acquire more vigour to help it
over the ills of childhood, but that, in the absence of the mother, it
might not miss the maternal sustenance; and also for the parent's sake,
that, should the milk, from any cause, become vitiated, or suddenly
cease, the child can be made over to the bottle and the spoon without
the slightest apprehension of hurtful consequences.

2498. To those persons unacquainted with the system, or who may have
been erroneously informed on the matter, the rearing of a child by hand
may seem surrounded by innumerable difficulties, and a large amount o