e, there will be no need of the
medicine.

CHAPTER VIII.

DRINKS.

Infants need little drink. Adults, even, generally drink to cool
themselves. Simple water the best drink. Opinions of Dr. Oliver and Dr.
Dewees. Animal food increases thirst. Only one real drink in the world.
The true object of all drink. Tea, coffee, chocolate, beer, &c. Milk and
water, molasses and water, &c. Cider, wine, and ardent spirits. Bad food
and drink the most prolific sources of disease. Children naturally
prefer water. Danger of hot drinks. Cold drinks. Mischief they produce.
Caution to mothers. Extracts. Drinking cold water, while hot.

Children need little if any drink, so long as their food is nothing but
milk; nor indeed for some time afterward, unless they are indulged in
the use of animal food. Adults, even, very seldom drink merely to quench
natural thirst. In the summer, people usually drink either to cool
themselves, or to gratify a thirst which is wholly artificial. Tea,
coffee, beer, cider, and most other common drinks, when not used for the
sake of their coolness, are drank, both in winter and summer, for this
purpose.

That this is the fact, we have the most abundant and unequivocal
evidence. I know that much is said of the demand which a profuse
perspiration creates among hard laborers in the summer. Such a sudden
abstraction of a large amount of fluid requires, it is said, a
proportional supply, or life would soon become extinct. Yet there are
many old men who have perspired profusely at their labor all their days,
and yet have drank nothing at all, except their tea, morning and
evening; and perhaps have eaten, for one or two of their meals daily, in
summer, a bowl of bread and milk. And some of them are among the most
remarkable instances of longevity which the country affords.

How the system acquires a sufficient supply of moisture to keep up good
health, in these cases, I do not pretend to determine: perhaps it is
through the medium of the lungs. But at any rate, it can obtain it
without our drinking for that sole purpose, to the great danger of
exciting liver complaints, diarrhoea, dyspepsia, colds, rheumatisms, and
fevers.

But if adults who perspire freely do not require much drink, children
certainly do not; and above all, young children. And if they do require
any thing, it is only simple water. The following remarks of Dr. Oliver,
of Hanover, N.H., are extracted from Dr. Mussey's late Prize Essay on