re was no spring or well to which they could have
access, privately. And though they thought the rule rather severe, I
have no doubt it saved them from much injury, and perhaps sometimes from
sickness.

CHAPTER IX.

GIVING MEDICINE.

"Prevention" better than "cure." Nine in ten infantile diseases caused
by errors in diet and drink. Signs of failing health. Causes of a bad
breath. Flesh eaters. Gormandizers. General rule for preventing disease.
When to call a physician.

So much error prevails in regard to the medical management of the young,
that a volume might be written without exhausting the subject.[Footnote:
Such a volume is in preparation. It is intended as a companion to the
present.] My present limits and plan allow of only a few remarks, and
those must be general.

That "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure," has so long ago
become a proverb, that it seems almost idle to repeat the sentiment. And
yet it is to be feared that very few receive it as a practical truth, in
the management of children. Now nothing is more certain than that it is
easier, as well as more humane, to prevent diseases than to cure them.

I have elsewhere mentioned the opinion of a very eminent physician,
that nine in ten of children's diseases may be imputed to error with
regard to the quantity or the quality of their food. For myself, I am by
no means certain that nine out of ten is the exact proportion, though I
think the number is, at all events, very large. Few children, or even
grown persons, are seized with disease suddenly. Their progress towards
it is always gradual, and sometimes imperceptible. To a physician of any
tolerable degree of skill, however, there is no difficulty in observing
and pointing out the first steps towards illness; in those whose habits
of life are well known to him; and of foretelling the consequence.

But since parents and nurses are not so well qualified as physicians to
make these observations, I will endeavor to point out a few certain
signs and symptoms by which they may know a child's health to be
declining, even before be appears to be sick.--For if these are
neglected, the evil increases, goes on from bad to worse, and more
violent and apparent complaints will follow, and perhaps end in
incurable diseases, which a timely remedy, or a slight change in the
diet and manner of life, would have infallibly prevented.

"The first tendency to disease," says Dr. Cadogan, "may be obs