Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. V, October, 1850, Volume I.

In laying a foundation of ill health, it is a great point to be able to begin at the beginning. You have the future man at excellent advantage when he is between your fingers as a baby. One of Hoffman's heroines, a clever housewife, discarded and abhorred her lover from the moment of his cutting a yeast dumpling. There are some little enormities of that kind which really can not be forgiven, and one such is, to miss the opportunity of physicking a baby. Now I will tell you how to treat the future pale-face at his first entrance into life.

A little while before the birth of any child, have a little something ready in a spoon; and, after birth, be ready at the first opportunity, to thrust this down his throat. Let his first gift from his fellow-creatures be a dose of physic-honey and calomel, or something of that kind: but you had better ask the nurse for a prescription. Have ready also, before birth, an abundant stock of pins; for it is a great point, in putting the first dress upon the little naked body, to contrive that it shall contain as many pins as possible. The prick of a sly pin is excellent for making children cry; and since it may lead nurses, mothers, now and then even doctors, to administer physic for the cure of imaginary gripings in the bowels, it may be twice blessed. Sanitary enthusiasts are apt to say that strings, not pins, are the right fastening for infants' clothes. Be not misled. Is not the pincushion an ancient institution? What is to say, "Welcome, little stranger," if pins cease to do so? Resist this innovation. It is the small end of the wedge. The next thing that a child would do, if let alone, would be to sleep. I would not suffer that. The poor thing must want feeding; therefore waken it and make it eat a sop, for that will be a pleasant joke at the expense of nature. It will be like wakening a gentleman after midnight to put into his mouth some pickled herring; only the baby can not thank you for your kindness as the gentleman might do.

This is a golden rule concerning babies: to procure sickly growth, let the child always suckle. Attempt no regularity in nursing. It is true that if an infant be fed at the breast every four hours, it will fall into the habit of desiring food only so often, and will sleep very tranquilly during the interval. This may save trouble, but it is a device for rearing healthy children: we discard it. Our infants shall be nursed in no new-fangled way. As for the child's crying, [pg 602] quiet costs eighteen-pence a bottle; so that argument is very soon disposed of.

Never be without a flask of Godfrey's Cordial, or Daffy, in the nursery; but the fact is, that you ought to keep a medicine-chest. A good deal of curious information may be obtained by watching the effects of various medicines upon your children.

Never be guided by the child's teeth in weaning it. Wean it before the first teeth are cut, or after they have learned to bite. Wean all at once, with bitter aloes or some similar devices; and change the diet suddenly. It is a foolish thing to ask a medical attendant how to regulate the food of children; he is sure to be over-run with bookish prejudices; but nurses are practical women, who understand thoroughly matters of this kind.

Do not use a cot for infants, or presume beyond the time-honored institution of the cradle. Active rocking sends a child to sleep by causing giddiness. Giddiness is a disturbance of the blood's usual way of circulation; obviously, therefore, it is a thing to aim at in our nurseries. For elder children, swinging is an excellent amusement, if they become giddy on the swing.

In your nursery, a maid and two or three children may conveniently be quartered for the night, by all means carefully secured from draughts. Never omit to use at night a chimney board. The nursery window ought not to be much opened; and the door should be kept always shut, in order that the clamor of the children may not annoy others in your house.

When the children walk out for an airing, of course they are to be little ladies and gentlemen. They are not to scamper to and fro; a little gentle amble with a hoop ought to be their severest exercise. In sending them to walk abroad, it is a good thing to let their legs be bare. The gentleman papa, probably, would find bare legs rather cold walking in the streets of London; but the gentleman son, of course, has quite another constitution. Besides, how can a boy, not predisposed that way, hope to grow up consumptive, if some pains are not taken with him in his childhood?

It is said that of old time children in the Balearic Islands were not allowed to eat their dinner, until, by adroitness in the shooting of stones out of a sling, they had dislodged it from a rafter in the house. Children in the British Islands should be better treated. Let them not only have their meals unfailingly, but let them be at all other times tempted and bribed to eat. Cakes and sweetmeats of alluring shape and color, fruits, and palatable messes, should, without any regularity, be added to the diet of a child. The stomach, we know, requires three or four hours to digest a meal, expects a moderate routine of tasks, and between each task looks for a little period of rest. Now, as we hope to create a weak digestion, what is more obvious than that we must use artifice to circumvent the stomach? In one hour we must come upon it unexpectedly with a dose of fruit and sugar; then, if the regular dinner have been taken, astonish the digestion, while at work upon it, with the appearance of an extra lump of cake, and presently some gooseberries. In this way we soon triumph over Nature, who, to speak truth, does not permit to us an easy victory, and does try to accommodate her working to our whims. We triumph, and obtain our reward in children pale and polite, children with appetites already formed, that will become our good allies against their health in after life.

Principiis obsta. Let us subdue mere nature at her first start, and make her civilized in her beginnings. Let us wipe the rose-tint out of the child's cheek, in good hope that the man will not be able to recover it. White, yellow, and purple-let us make them to be his future tricolor.