all practicable, of keeping the child _entirely_ to the breast for the
first five or six months of his existence. Remember there is no
_real_ substitute for a mother's milk, there is no food so well
adapted to his stomach, there is no diet equal to it in developing
muscle, in making bone, or in producing that beautiful plump rounded
contour of the limbs, there is nothing like a mother's milk _alone_ in
making a child contented and happy, in laying the foundation of a
healthy constitution, in preparing the body for a long life, in giving
him tone to resist disease, or in causing him to cut his teeth easily
and well, in short, _the mothers milk is the greatest temporal
blessing an infant can possess_.

As a general rule, therefore, when the child and the mother are
tolerably strong, he is better _without artificial_ food until he have
attained the age of three or four months, then, it will usually be
necessary to feed him with _The Milk-water-and-sugar-of milk Food_
(see p 19) twice a day, so as gradually to prepare him to be weaned
(if possible) at the end of nine months. The food mentioned in the
foregoing Conversation will, when he is six or seven months old, be
the best for him.

36. _When the mother is not able to suckle her infant herself, what
ought to be done_?

It must first be ascertained, _beyond all doubt_, that a mother is not
able to suckle her own child Many delicate ladies do suckle their
infants with advantage, not only to their offspring, but to
themselves. "I will maintain," says Steele, "that the mother grows
stronger by it, and will have her health better than she would have
otherwise She will find it the greatest cure, and preservative for the