eeded fruits, however, are by far the most
wholesome. Of these, the ripe strawberry and raspberry deserve the
first rank. The grape is also cooling and antiseptic, but the husks and
seeds should be rejected. The gooseberry is less wholesome on account
of the indigestibility of the skin, which is too frequently swallowed.

Dried fruits a child should never be permitted to eat.

WATER.--This should be the only beverage throughout childhood. Toast-
and-water, if the child prefer it, which is rendered slightly more
nutritive than the more simple fluid. The water employed in its
preparation, however, must be at a boiling temperature, and it ought to
be drunk as soon as it has sufficiently cooled; for by being kept, it
acquires a mawkish and unpleasant flavour.

WINE, BEER, etc.--The practice of giving wine, or, indeed, any
stimulant, to a healthy child, is highly reprehensible; it ought never
to be given but medicinally.

The circulation in infancy and childhood is not only more rapid than
in the adult, but easily excited to greater vehemence of action; the
nervous system, too, is so susceptible, that the slightest causes of
irritation produce strong and powerful impressions: the result in
either case is diseased action in the frame, productive of fever,
convulsions, etc.; wine, accordingly, is detrimental to children.

An experiment made by Dr. Hunter upon two of his children illustrates,
in a striking manner, the pernicious effects of even a small portion of
intoxicating liquors in persons of this tender age. To one of the
children he gave, every day after dinner, a full glass of sherry: the
child was five years of age, and unaccustomed to the use of wine. To
the other child, of nearly the same age, and equally unused to wine, he
gave an orange. In the course of a week, a very marked difference was
perceptible in the pulse, urine, and evacuations from the bowels of the
two children. The pulse of the first was raised, the urine high
coloured, and the evacuations destitute of their usual quantity of
bile. In the other child, no change whatever was produced. He then
reversed the experiment, giving to the first the orange, and to the
second the wine, and the results corresponded: the child who had the
orange continued well, and the system of the other got straightway
into disorder, as in the first experiment.[FN#15]

[FN#15] Marcellin relates an instance of seven children in a family
whose bowels became infested