When six months old, a child may be fed every four hours, when awake. Nothing can be more injurious to health than too frequent or irregular meals. Children, if left to themselves, soon acquire the habit of passing through the night without being fed.
839. _Weaning_ of children should not take place under six months, if the mother be in health, nor be deferred beyond nine months. It cannot be too frequently impressed on the mind of the parent, that the future health and strength of her child depend on a due supply of the food which nature has provided. Regarding her own health, the chances are that it will be improved--at all events, it is incumbent on her to make the experiment; if her strength falls off, she may at any time retire from the effort, and engage a wet-nurse.
This _foster-parent_ should not be more than thirty years of age, nor should her milk be more than three months old. She should be in health, free from scorbutic or scrofulous taints, from cutaneous scurf, or eruptions, perfectly clean in her person, and extremely neat in her management of whatever concerns the child. She must be sober and temperate: her diet should consist of a due proportion of bread, fresh meat, and vegetables; her drink, tea, chocolate, and milk and water; but on no consideration either wine or any other spirituous liquors. These, if drank by the nurse, will prove injurious to the child.
840. _Proper Medicines for Infants._--Nature has not only provided food for infants, but likewise given to them a constitution capable of correcting those slight deviations from health, to which alone they are liable when properly nursed. This has induced many to assert that medicines are not required in the nursery: perhaps the assertion might be correct, if children were suffered to remain in a state of nature: the further they are removed from it, the evils they have to contend with bear a proportionate increase. As most of their complaints arise from a want of attention to their food, to air, and exercise, by a prompt and skilful use of medicine, these complaints may be removed; therefore, it is not the use but the abuse of medicine that should be avoided. If a child be tormented by a pin running into the flesh, no one would contend against the removal of the pin.