It is claimed, and no doubt rightfully, that it is the children of the poorer classes who suffer most in large cities from bowel complaints. To this too many are ready to say, “Amen.”
But there are duties involving upon each and all, rich or poor, from which none can expect to be excused till the last known part has been performed. As the chances now appear, there need be no lack of the common comforts of life in most of our large cities and towns. This is a land of opportunities; in it the laborer gets, or should get, his hire. It therefore becomes his privilege to aid by prudence, industry, and economy, in elevating his family to the discouragement of pauperism and wilful neglect of the laws of health.
It very often happens that those very persons, who claim to be too poor to obtain the necessary comforts of life for their little ones, will not hesitate to purchase some extortionately high-priced article, for which they must enslave themselves to pay by the week or month, and which is of far less value than their own or their children’s health. I would suggest here that an extra ten-cent piece be deposited in safe keeping each day as a surety for a baby’s comforts for the first six months; which should afterward be increased to twenty cents a day, and thus continued during its childhood.
When a child is five or six months old, it is best to begin to feed once or twice a day, so that the weaning may not be too suddenly enforced upon it. Bread, crumbled in a small quantity of milk, corn-meal pudding, mutton or chicken broth, Graham biscuit; very little salt added to the porridges is healthy. But no disagreeable substances, such as aloes, pepper or salt, should be applied to the nipples for the purpose of weaning a child; a plaster of wool or fur is more safe for the health of the child.
In this climate (Massachusetts) there are many families who fear to wean their children at any season of the year; many of them migrating from a climate less variable, and in which the customs of feeding infants are altogether different. Such mothers are deserving of no small share of sympathy. I am acquainted with hundreds of them; thank God there are some good mothers, good enough to take the blame upon themselves should their infants sicken and die after being weaned. But for all such there may be found in this little cabinet a consoling word.