I have already said that it was as necessary that the stomach should have rest as any other muscular organ.  Some writers say that the infant should be kept perfectly quiet, at least half an hour, after each meal.  This is certainly necessary with feeble children, but I question its necessity in the case of those who are strong and robust.  I would not recommend, however, nor even tolerate, for one moment, the absurd practice of jolting, so common with a few ignorant nurses and, mothers, as if they could jolt down the food in the stomach with just as much safety as they can shake down the contents of a farmer’s bag of produce.  Such mothers as these should go and reside among the native tribes of Indians in Guiana, in South America, where they make it a point not only to stuff their children’s stomachs as long as they will hold, but actually to shake it down.

Little less absurd than jolting is the custom of tossing a child high, in quick succession, which is practised not only after meals, but at other times.  But on this point, I have treated elsewhere.

Some give the sucking bottle to children as a plaything.  This is just about as wise a practice as that of giving them books as playthings.  Both are done, usually, to save the time and trouble of those whose office it is to devote their time to the very purpose of managing and educating their offspring.  The evil, however, of suffering the child to have the bottle when it pleases is, that he will thus be tasting food so often as to interfere with and disturb the process of digestion, to his great and lasting injury.  For in this way, a part of the food will pass from the stomach into the bowels unchanged, or at least but imperfectly digested, where it is liable to become sour, and cause disease.  It is not to be doubted that many diarrhoeas, as well as, other bowel affections, are produced in this way.  Children that are always eating are seldom healthy; and we may hence see the reason.

In speaking of the importance of keeping the bottle, from which a child takes his food, perfectly clean and sweet, I ought to have extended the injunction much farther.  There is a degree of slovenliness sometimes observable in those who manage children, both when they are sick and when they are in health, which even common sense cannot and ought not to tolerate.  Every vessel which is used in preparing or administering anything for children, ought, after we have used it, to be immediately and effectually cleansed.  How shocking is it to see dirty vessels standing in the nursery from hour to hour, becoming sour or impure!  How much more so still, to see food in copper vessels, or in the red earthen ones, glazed with a poisonous oxyd!  I speak now more particularly of vessels in which food is given; for with the administration of medicine, and nursing the sick, I do not intend in this volume to interfere.

EXCEPTION 3.—­We come now to the consideration of those cases—­for such it will not be doubted there are—­where a hired nurse is to be preferred to feeding by the hand.