It is often asserted, that the first hair of children is always brown, but that it presently falls off, and is succeeded by hair of a different colour. Whether the remark is just or not I cannot determine, but the hair of most children is fair, and, in many instances, almost white. In some it is red, and in others black, yet in those who are to have fair or brown complexions, the hair in the earliest stage of infancy, is fair in a greater or less degree. Those who give a promise of future fairness have generally blue eyes, those likely to be red have a yellowish shade in their eyes, and those who will be brown have a darker yellow; but colours are very imperfectly distinguished in the eyes of new-born infants, because they have almost all the semblance of blue.
When a child is suffered to cry too violently, and too long, it may in consequence be afflicted with a rupture, in which case an early application of bandages is necessary; with this assistance the complaint is removed with ease, without it the disease may last for life.
The limits of my plan admit not a detail of every disease incidental to children. I shall only remark, that worms, and all verminous diseases, very evidently owe their origin to the nature of their food. Milk is a kind of chyle, an unadulterated nutriment; it consists of organic and generative substances, and, therefore, if not digested by the stomach, and made use of in the expansion and growth of the body, it assumes, by its essential activity, other forms, and produces animated beings, particularly worms, in such quantities, that the infant is often in danger of falling a victim to them. A part of the bad effects that accrue from worms, might probably be prevented, by allowing children to drink a little wine, because all fermented liquors counteract the generation of worms, and besides contain but few organic nutritive particles: it is chiefly by its action upon the solids that wine gives strength, and it may be rather said to fortify the body than to strengthen it. Besides, the generality of children are fond of wine, at least easily accustomed to drink it.
However delicate the frame may be in infancy, it is yet less sensible of cold than during any other period of life. As the pulse of infants is more quick than that of adults, it may, from this circumstance alone, be concluded, that the internal heat is proportionally greater. On the same principle it is hardly to be doubted, that of this heat small animals have a greater share than the large; it has invariably been found, that, in the same degree the animal is small, the motion of the heart and arteries is proportionally vigorous and quick; and this is ever the case in the same as well as in different species. The pulse of an infant, or of a man of small stature, is more frequent than that of a grown person, or a man of a large size. The pulse of an ox is slower, and a dog quicker than that of a man; and so precipitate are the motions in the heart of an animal still smaller, as a sparrow, for instance, they can hardly be counted.