Cure.  If this be from too much milk, that which is emitted is yellow and green, or otherwise ill-coloured and stinking; in this case, mend the milk, as has been shown before; cleanse the child with honey of roses, and strengthen its stomach with syrup of milk and quinces, made into an electuary.  If the humours be hot and sharp, give the syrup of pomegranates, currants and coral, and apply to the belly the plaster of bread, the stomach cerate, or bread dipped in hot wine; or take oil of mastich, quinces, mint, wormwood, each half an ounce; of nutmegs by expression, half a drachm; chemical oil of mint, three drops.  Coral hath an occult property to prevent vomiting, and is therefore hung about the neck.

SECT.  VIII—­Of Breeding Teeth in Young Children.

This is a very great and yet necessary evil in all children, having variety of symptoms joined with it.  They begin to come forth, not all at once, but one after the other, about the sixth or seventh month; the fore-teeth coming first, then the eye-teeth, and last of all the grinders.  The eye-teeth cause more pain to the child than any of the rest, because they have a deep root, and a small nerve which has communication with that which makes the eye move.

[Illustration]

In the breeding of the teeth, first they feel an itching in their gums, then they are pierced as with a needle, and pricked by the sharp bones, whence proceed great pains, watching, inflammation of the gums, fever, looseness and convulsions, especially when they breed their eye-teeth.

The signs when children breed their eye-teeth are these: 

1.  It is known by the time, which is usually about the seventh month.

2.  Their gums are swelled, and they feel a great heat there with an itching, which makes them put their fingers into their mouths to rub them; a moisture also distils from the gums into the mouth, because of the pain they feel there.

3.  They hold the nipple faster than before.

4.  The gums are white when the teeth begin to come, and the nurse, in giving them suck, finds the mouth hotter, and that they are much changed, crying every moment, and cannot sleep, or but very little at a time.

The fever that follows breeding of teeth comes from choleric humours, inflamed by watching, pain and heat.  And the longer teeth are breeding, the more dangerous it is; so that many in the breeding of them, die of fevers and convulsions.

Cure.  Two things are to be regarded:—­one is, to preserve the child from the evil accidents that may happen to it by reason of the great pain; the other, to assist as much as may be, the cutting of the teeth, when they can hardly cut the gums themselves.

For the first of these, viz., the preventing of those accidents to the child, the nurse ought to take great care to keep a good diet, and to use all things that may cool and temper her milk, that so a fever may not follow the pain of the teeth.  And to prevent the humour falling too much upon the inflamed gums, let the child’s belly be always kept loose by gentle clysters, if he be bound; though oftentimes there is no need of them, because they are at those times usually troubled with a looseness; and yet, for all that, clysters may not be improper.