rice by
day, once the last thing at night, and once again in the early morning,
are best for the child's health as well as for the nurse's comfort.

How is an infant not at the breast to be fed? Certainly not with the
cup or spoon; a child so fed has no choice in the matter, but must
either swallow or choke, and is fed as they fatten turkeys for the
market. The infant, on the other hand, sucks the bottle as it would suck
its mother's breast; it rests when fatigued, it stops to play, it leaves
off when it has had enough, and many a useful inference may be drawn by
the observant nurse or mother who watches the infant sucking, and
notices if the child sucks feebly, or leaves off panting from want of
breath, or stops in the midst, and cries because its mouth is sore or
its gums are tender.

But it is not every bottle which an infant should be fed from, and
least of all from those so much in vogue now with the long elastic tube,
so handy because they keep the baby quiet, who will lie by the hour
together with the end in its mouth, sucking, or making as though it
sucked, even when the bottle is empty. These bottles, as well as the
tubes connected with them, are most difficult to keep clean; and so
serious is this evil, that many French physicians not only denounce
their use, in which they are perfectly justified, but prefer, to the use
of any bottle at all, the feeding the infant with a spoon; and here I
think they are mistaken. The old-fashioned flat bottle, with an opening
in the middle, and a short end to which the nipple is attached without
any tube, the only one known in the time of our grandmothers, continues
still the best, and very good. My friend, Mr. Edmund Owen, in a lecture
at which I presided at the Health Exhibition in August last year,
pointed out very humorously the differences between the old bottle and
the new. An infant to be kept in health must not be always sucking, but
must be fed at regular intervals. The careful nurse takes the infant on
her knee, feeds it from the old-fashioned feeding-bottle, regulating the
flow of the milk according as the infant sucks heartily or slowly,
withdraws it for a minute or two, and raises the child into a sitting
posture if it seems troubled with flatulence, and then after a pause
lets it recommence its meal. This occupies her a quarter of an hour or
twenty minutes of well-spent time, while the lazy nurse, or the mother
who has never given the matter a thought, just puts