Bicarbonate of soda         40 grains
Aromatic syrup of rhubarb    4 drams
Syrup of senna               5 drams
Syrup of orange              1 ounce

One teaspoonful two or three times daily is needed in sour gassy stomach, with constipation or foul smelling stools.  Fortunately such medicine is not often needed if the mother is careful, or baby is carefully bottle-fed.  When there is vomiting with the colic and the stools contain curds the food is too strong.  The nursing baby should be given one ounce of warm water before nursing, and the food for the bottle-fed baby should be made weaker by going back one formula.  Sometimes peptonizing the food for a short time will do.  This is very good when the proteids (curds) are hard for the baby to digest.

EARACHE.

Many young babies suffer from this trouble without the cause being even suspected.  It may come after a cold, an attack of bronchitis or pneumonia, and sometimes during teething.  It often accompanies scarlet fever and measles.  The child screams, presses his head against his mother or nurse, pulls at his ear as if it hurt him.  If you press in front of the ear the baby jumps as if in great pain and cries aloud.  The pain is likely to be continuous and prolonged.

What can I do for it?  Heat is the best remedy.  Wash out the ear with a hot solution of boric acid fifteen to twenty grains to the ounce of water, and then apply heat in various ways.  Have the child lie with the painful ear against a covered hot water bag or heat a flannel over a lamp and place it against the ear, changing it often to keep it hot.  A bag of hot salt or bran is also very good.  Laudanum and oil should not be used unless ordered by a physician.  As soon as possible after the first attack of pain the baby should be examined by a doctor and unnecessary deafness is often avoided by such action.  For a more extended account, see General Department.  Fomentations applied are often beneficial, especially of hot water.

(See Earache, Mothers’ Remedies, etc. under General Department).

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CROUP.

This disease is treated fully in the general department; only a general outline is given here.  This is a disease dreaded by most mothers.  It is more distressing than dangerous.  Its appearance is sudden and generally at night.  The baby may have had a slight cold or have been exposed to a bad wind or it may have come on without any known cause.

Symptoms.—­They are known to almost everyone.  There is a hard, dry, barking, hoarse cough, generally with difficulty in breathing to a greater or less degree with a distressed look.

(For Mothers’ Remedies, see General Department.)