Let these directions be carried out sensibly, patiently, perseveringly, and three times out of four, or oftener still, the mother's ear will before many days be greeted by the loud cry, with its _cri_ and _reprise_ of which I have already spoken, and which assures her that her little one will live.
There are no other affections of the lungs so peculiar to the first month of life as to call for notice here. I shall have a few observations to make about malformations of the heart, and the precautions for which they call in the after-life of children; but they will find their fittest place in the chapter on Affections of the Chest.
=Jaundice of New-born Children.=--A certain yellow tinge of the skin, unattended by any other sign of jaundice, such as the yellowness of the eye and the dark colour of the urine, is by no means to be confounded with real jaundice. It is no real jaundice, but is merely the result of the changes which the blood with which the small vessels of the skin are overcharged at birth is undergoing; the redness fading as bruises fade, through shades of yellow into the genuine flesh colour.
This is no disease, to be treated with the grey powder and the castor oil wherewith the over-busy monthly nurse is always ready. It is a natural process, which the intelligent may watch with interest, with which none but the ignorant will try to interfere.
There is, however, beside this a real jaundice, in which the skin is more deeply stained, the whites of the eyes are yellow, the urine high-coloured, and in which the dark evacuations that carry away the contents of the bowels before birth are succeeded by white motions, from which the bile is absent. This condition is not very usual, save where children have been exposed to cold, or where the air they breathe is unwholesome. Of this no better proof can be given than is afforded by the fact that in the Dublin Lying-in Hospital, where the children are defended with the greatest care both from cold and from a vitiated atmosphere, infantile jaundice is extremely rare, while it attacks three-fourths of the children received into the Foundling Hospital of Paris. Still it does sometimes occur when yet no cause can be assigned for it, and it is noteworthy that it is sometimes met with in successive infants in the same family.