Then, even before they are weaned, they will teach them to suck raw beef; for what?  Has not their natural food sustained them well?  An infant will have teeth before it wants animal food.

But all these courses they have heard were strengthening, so they administer them to the strongest, till excess of stimulants produces inflammation, and the natural strength is wasted by disease.  Then the child grows pale and feeble; now the stimulants are redoubled, they are taken to the sea-shore, kept constantly in the open air, and a great amount of exercise is insisted on.  By this time all the symptoms of internal inflammation show themselves:  the skin is pale, the hands and feet cold, dark under the eyes, reluctance to move, &c., &c.  But no one suspects what is the matter; even the physician is often deceived at this stage of the process, and if he is, the child’s case will be a hard one.

I mention particularly this course of stimulants, as it is just now the prevalent mania.  Every one ought to understand, that those practices which are commonly called strengthening, are, in other words, stimulating, and that to apply stimulants where the system is already in a state of health, will produce too much excitement.  The young, from the natural quickness of their circulation, are particularly liable to this excess of action, which is inflammation.  This general inflammation, in time, settles into some form of acute disease, so that in fact, by blindly attempting to strengthen, we inflame, disease, and enfeeble to the greatest possible degree.

If we look at nature—­at the animal instincts that are around us, what a different course does it advise!  The Creator has taught the lower races to take care of their young; and if some accident does not happen to them they never lose one; just as they manage to-day, just so did they do for them a thousand years ago.  Man is left to his own reason, I had almost said to his caprice; every age has produced different customs, and in consequence different diseases.  More than half of the human race die under five years old; how small a portion live to the full “threescore and ten.”

Morally and intellectually, man may advance to an almost unlimited extent; but he must remember, that physically he is subjected to the same laws as other animals.  Is it not quite time that we should bow our pride of reason, and look to the practice of those animals that raise all their young, and live out their own natural lives?  How do they manage?  We need not look far; see, madam, the cat; how does she contrive to rear her young family?  Who ever saw her give one of them a shower-bath?  Who ever saw her take a piece of meat to her nest, that her little ones might try their gums on it, before their teeth had grown?  Who ever saw her taking them out of a cold winter’s day for exercise in the open air, till their little noses were as red as those of the unfortunate babies one meets every cold day?