TAKING CARE OF THE LITTLE ONES.
SUMMER care of the children is given a few timely words by Hester M. Poole in a recent number of Good Housekeeping. She says special care is necessary. Dress them in a couple of garments so they can tumble about easily, and let them play in a shady place with plenty of clean sand. For their sake the mother needs to be admonished to look well after the cleansing of all vessels in which milk is kept or used. When emptied, milk dishes should be washed at once in cold suds, then scalded in hot suds, rinsed, and, if practicable, daily sunned. Should they be scalded first, particles of curdled milk will adhere to sides and crevices, and, souring, will provoke all sorts of stomach disorders. Carelessness or thoughtlessness in these respects has robbed many a home of its little prattlers. Let them have fresh, ripe fruit, never the stale, and see that if unpeeled the fruit is well washed. Between the visitations of insects, dust, and unclean hands, without washing fruit, one may consume deleterious matter. It would be well for grown people to remember this fact. Also look well to remnants of food kept in safes or refrigerator. Since science has diagnosed ptomain poison, which too often festers in cheese, meat, and milk as well as fish, much acute suffering and many deaths, formerly unaccountable, have been traced to the subtle action of bacteria. One good rule is never to set aside in a close receptacle any article of warm food. Everything should be well aired before putting in a cool place, and no food, in warm weather, should be cooked or kept in tin. Acids, particularly, are made poisonous by carelessness. Decaying fruit, withered vegetables, are, to say the least, dangerous to the most healthy. Eternal care and cleanliness are the price of well being. Among other things let the beds be taken apart and given a daily airing, and not pass over the unspeakable filth of leaving the chamber with sheets fetid with the emanations of the night, thrown and tumbled just as sleepers have left them. Children at four years of age can be taught to turn back their little bedding; such lessons are never forgotten. As a beverage we have previously pointed out the need of sterilizing milk for babies and children. The danger of contracting typhoid and consumption from using milk drawn from cows that are often in apparent11health is emphasized by the statements made by the health boards of various States and cities. Milk is sterilized by bottling, corking with cotton, and after placing the bottles in a kettle having a false bottom, filling the vessel with cold water, and allowing it to come to a boil. At the end of half an hour, the bottles may be removed and closely corked. Whatever unwholesome bacteria the milk might have contained are killed by the heat. Even then, milk must be sipped. Taken at one draught it is coagulated by the gastric juice the moment it reaches the stomach. There it remains in one large lump, upon which that digestive fluid can not act. There results disturbance or pain, and the person supposes the milk disagrees with him or her. The fact is that the same amount of milk, slowly sipped, would present to the gastric juice small, separate masses of coagulum that are readily acted upon. Hence all depends upon the manner in which fluids are imbibed. It must be borne in mind, however, that milk should never be taken at the same meal with meat or with acid fruits. Think of the mass of complicated stuff taken at one meal by the careless eater, who declares that he can digest anything, and wonder not when he breaks down in health and becomes an invalid. That we can eat anything that is not poisonous if taken in the right way, is true. Still, unhappy mixtures, too many kinds of food at one meal, and such things as pickles and milk or ice cream or edibles that are violently antagonistic, excesses, and combinations that require great difference of time in order to complete digestion, all these are unreasonable, exhausting, and intemperate. Temperance means something more than abstinence from alcohol. It is moderation in all foods and drinks.