tead of white bread. This will, in the majority
of cases, enable her to do without an aperient. The brown bread may be made
with flour finely ground all one way; or by mixing one part of bran and
three parts of fine wheaten flour together, and then making it in the usual
way into bread. Treacle instead of butter, on the brown bread increases its
efficacy as an aperient; and raw should be substituted for lump sugar in
her tea.

11. TO PREVENT CONSTIPATION.--Stewed prunes, or stewed French plums, or
stewed Normandy pippins, are excellent remedies to prevent constipation.
The patient ought to eat, every morning, a dozen or fifteen of them. The
best way to stew either prunes or French plums, is the following:--Put a
pound of either prunes or French plums, and two tablespoonfuls of raw
sugar, into a brown jar; cover them with water; put them into a slow oven,
and stew them for three or four hours. Both stewed rhubarb and stewed {313}
pears often act as mild and gentle aperients. Muscatel raisins, eaten at
dessert, will oftentimes without medicine relieve the bowels.

12. COLD WATER.--A tumblerful of cold water, taken early every morning,
sometimes effectually relieves the bowels; indeed, few people know the
value of cold water as an aperient--it is one of the best we possess, and,
unlike drug aperients, can never by any possibility do any harm. An
injection of warm water is one of the best ways to relieve the bowels.

13. WELL-COOKED VEGETABLES.--Although a nursing mother ought, more
especially if she be costive, to take a variety of well-cooked vegetables,
such as potatoes, asparagus, cauliflower, French beans, spinach, stewed
celery and turnips; she should avoid eating greens, cabbages, and pickles,
as they would be likely to affect the babe, and might cause him to suffer
from gripings, from pain, and "looseness" of the bowels.

14. SUPERSEDE THE NECESSITY OF TAKING PHYSIC.--Let me again--for it cannot
be too urgently insisted upon--strongly advise a nursing mother to use
every means in the way of diet, etc., to supersede the necessity of taking
physic (opening medicine), as the repetition of aperients injures, and that
severely, both herself and child. Moreover, the more opening medicine she
swallows, the more she requires; so that if she once gets into the habit of
regularly taking physic, the bowels will not act without them. What a
miserable existence to be always swallowing physic!

[Illustration]

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