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Not oftener than twice during the twenty-four hours, and then only in small quantities at a time, as the stomach requires rest, and at the same time can manage to digest a little food better than it can a great deal.

Let me again urge upon you the importance, if it be at all practicable, of keeping the child entirely to the breast for the first three or four 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 mother’s 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 has attained the age of three or four months; then it will usually be necessary to feed him 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 be the best for him, commencing without the cow’s milk, but gradually adding it, as less mother’s milk and more artificial food be given.