imes a day, it has been overloaded? While the natural
strength lasts, (for every child is born with more health and strength
than is generally imagined,) it cries at or rejects the superfluous
load, and _thrives apace_; that is, grows very fat, bloated, and
distended beyond measure, like a house lamb.

"But in time, the same oppressive cause continuing, the natural powers
are overcome, being no longer able to throw off the unequal weight. The
child, now unable to cry any more, languishes and is quiet.

"The misfortune is, that these complaints are not understood. The child
is swaddled and crammed on, till, after gripes, purging, &c., it sinks
under both burdens into a convulsion fit, and escapes farther torture.
This would be the case with the lamb, were it not killed, when full fat.

"That the present mode of nursing is wrong, one would think needed no
other proof than the frequent miscarriages attending it, the death of
many, and the ill health of those that survive. But what I am going to
complain of is, that children, in general, are over-clothed and
over-fed, and fed and clothed improperly. To these causes I attribute
almost all their diseases.

"But the feeding of children is much more important to them than their
clothing. Let us consider what nature directs in the case. If we follow
nature, instead of leading or driving her, we cannot err. In the
business of nursing, as well as physic, art, if it do not exactly copy
this original, is ever destructive.

"If I could prevail, no child should ever be crammed with any unnatural
mixture, till the provision of nature was ready for it; nor afterwards
fed with any ungenial diet whatever, at least for the _first three
months_; for it is not well able to digest and assimilate other elements
sooner.

"I have seen very healthy children that never ate or drank anything
whatever but their mother's milk, for the first ten or twelve months.
Nature seems to direct to this, by giving them no teeth till about that
time. The call of nature should be waited for to feed them with anything
more substantial; and the appetite ought ever to precede the food--not
only with regard to the daily meals, but those changes of diet which
opening, increasing life requires. But this is never done, in either
case; which is one of the greatest mistakes of all nurses.

"When the child requires more solid sustenance, we are to inquire what
and how much is most proper to give it. We may be well a