"It is a common mistake, to suppose, that, because a woman is nursing, she ought to live very fully, and to add an allowance of wine, porter, or other fermented liquor, to her usual diet. The only result of this plan, is, to cause an unnatural fulness in the system, which places the nurse on the brink of disease, and retards, rather than increases, the food of the infant. More will be gained by the observance of the ordinary laws of health, than by any foolish deviation, founded on ignorance."
There is no point, on which medical men so emphatically lift the voice of warning, as in reference to administering medicines to infants. It is so difficult to discover what is the matter with an infant, its frame is so delicate and so susceptible, and slight causes have such a powerful influence, that it requires the utmost skill and judgement to ascertain what would be proper medicines, and the proper quantity to be given.
Says Dr. Combe, "That there are cases, in which active means must be promptly used, to save the child, is perfectly true. But it is not less certain, that these are cases, of which no mother or nurse ought to attempt the treatment. As a general rule, where the child is well managed, medicine, of any kind, is very rarely required; and if disease were more generally regarded in its true light, not as something thrust into the system, which requires to be expelled by force, but as an aberration from a natural mode of action, produced by some external cause, we should be in less haste to attack it by medicine, and more watchful in its prevention. Accordingly, where a constant demand for medicine exists in a nursery, the mother may rest assured, that there is something essentially wrong in the treatment of her children.
"Much havoc is made among infants, by the abuse of calomel and other medicines, which procure momentary relief, but end by producing incurable disease; and it has often excited my astonishment, to see how recklessly remedies of this kind are had recourse to, on the most trifling occasions, by mothers and nurses, who would be horrified, if they knew the nature of the power they are wielding, and the extent of injury they are inflicting."
Instead, then, of depending on medicine, for the preservation of the health and life of an infant, the following precautions and preventives should be adopted.