“It is ridiculous to charge it upon nature, and to suppose that infants are more subject to disease and death than grown persons; on the contrary, they bear pain and disease much better—­fevers especially; and for the same reason that a twig is less hurt by a storm than an oak.

“In all the other productions of nature, we see the greatest vigor and luxuriancy of health, the nearer they are to the egg or bud.  When was there a lamb, a bird, or a tree, that died because it was young?  These are under the immediate nursing of unerring nature; and they thrive accordingly.

“Ought it not, therefore, to be the care of every nurse and every parent, not only to protect their nurslings from injury, but to be well assured that their own officious services be not the greatest evils the helpless creatures can suffer?

“In the lower class of mankind, especially in the country, disease and mortality are not so frequent, either among adults or their children.  Health and posterity are the portion of the poor—­I mean the laborious.  The want of superfluity confines them more within the limits of nature; hence they enjoy the blessings they feel not, and are ignorant of their cause.

“In the course of my practice, I have had frequent occasion to be fully satisfied of this; and have often heard a mother anxiously say, ’the child has not been well ever since it has done puking and crying.’

“These complaints, though not attended to, point very plainly to the cause.  Is it not very evident that when a child rids its stomach of its contents several times 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.