These pains, if let alone, are of dangerous consequences, because they may bring forth watchings and epilepsy; for the moisture breeds worms there, and fouls the spongy bones, and by degrees causes incurable deafness.

Cure.  Allay the pain with all convenient speed, but have a care of using strong remedies.  Therefore, only use warm milk about the ears, with the decoction of poppy tops, or oil of violets; to take away the moisture, use honey of roses, and let aqua mollis be dropped into the ears; or take virgin honey, half an ounce; red wines two ounces; alum, saffron, saltpetre, each a drachm, mix them at the fire; or drop in hemp seed oil with a little wine.

SECT.  VI.—­Of Redness and Inflammation of the Buttocks, Groin and the
    Thighs of a Young Child.

If there be no great care taken to change and wash the child’s bed as soon as it is fouled with the excrements, and to keep the child very clean, the acrimony will be sure to cause redness, and beget a smarting in the buttocks, groin and thighs of the child, which, by reason of the pain, will afterwards be subject to inflammations, which follow the sooner, through the delicacy and tenderness of their skin, from which the outward skin of the body is in a short time separated and worn away.

Cure.  First, keep the child cleanly, and secondly, take off the sharpness of its urine.  As to keeping it cleanly, she must be a sorry nurse who needs to be taught how to do it; for if she lets it but have dry, warm and clean beds and cloths, as often and as soon as it has fouled and wet them, either by its urine or its excrements, it will be sufficient.  And as to taking off the sharpness of the child’s urine, that must be done by the nurse’s taking a cool diet, that her milk may have the same quality; and, therefore, she ought to abstain from all things that may tend to heat it.

But besides these, cooling and drying remedies are requisite to be applied to the inflamed parts; therefore let the parts be bathed in plantain-water, with a fourth of lime water added to it, each time the child’s excrements are wiped off; and if the pain be very great, let it only be fomented with lukewarm milk.  The powder of a post to dry it, or a little mill-dust strewed upon the parts affected, may be proper enough, and is used by many women.  Also, unguentum album, or diapompholigos, spread upon a small piece of leather in form of a plaster, will not be amiss.

But the chief thing must be, the nurse’s taking great care to wrap the inflamed parts with fine rags when she opens the child, that these parts may not gather and be pained by rubbing together.

SECT.  VII.—­Of Vomiting in Young Children.

Vomiting in young children proceeds sometimes from too much milk, and sometimes from bad milk, and as often from a moist, loose stomach; for as dryness retains so looseness lets go.  This is, for the most part, without danger in children; for they that vomit from their birth are the lustiest; for the stomach not being used to meat, and milk being taken too much, crudities are easily bred, or the milk is corrupted; and it is better to vomit these up than to keep them in; but if vomiting last long, it will cause an atrophy or consumption, for want of nourishment.