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INTRODUCTION.

Every Mother her Child's best Physician.

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SOME time since, while looking over a file of old newspapers, I cast my eyes upon the obituaries, and was forcibly impressed with the great proportion of children whọ are yearly consigned to the relentless grave under the age of two years. I revolved in my mind why it was so, and could not avoid concluding that it must be in a great measure occasioned by some gross mismanagement in mothers or nurses, or perhaps in both. Involuntarily I looked around upon my own children, and my heart swelled with gratitude to heaven for hitherto averting the shafts of the fell destroyer from them, and permitting the roses of health to bloom on their cheeks with almost uninterrupted continuity.

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Deeply impressed by this invaluable blessing of a merciful Providence, I felt an irresistible desire to see the same feliA*

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city pervade every maternal bosom. But alas! imagination presented to my view the sick or the dying babe, and the anxious or distracted mother, and I ardently wished to extend my hand, feeble though it might be, to their relief. And why, thought I, may not this be done. I remembered, when my first child was an infant, how easily I was alarmed if he was ill, and how eargerly I caught at every glimpse of light that promised to direct me in the management of him; I recollected the words of an eminent physician, whom I was in the habit of summoning every time my babe looked paler than usual. "You may yourself be your child's best physician," said this excellent man, "if you only will attend to a few general directions." I promised faithful obedience; and Heaven has crowned my endeavours with success: why then may I not show my gratitude, by presenting to the matrons of my country the fruits of my experience, in the pleasing hope that I may be instrumental in directing them in the all-important and delightful task of nur sing those sweet pledges of connubial love,

over whom every good mother watches with tremulous anxiety, and almost painful affection. A very near and dear friend, not entirely unknown in the literary world, approving my plan, I have resolved on the attempt, and if I can happily aid in preserving but one lovely babe from fell disease, in averting the deadliest arrow of affliction from the bosom of but one mother, great will be my reward. I am well aware how much has been written on this subject by the most able physicians, to whom I acknowledge myself indebted for many useful hints; but these gentlemen must pardon me if I think, after all, that a mother is her child's best physician, in all ordinary cases; and that none but a mother can tell how to nurse an infant as it ought to be nursed. Who but a mother can possibly feel interest enough in a helpless new born babe to pay it that unwearied, uninterrupted attention necessary to detect in season any latent symptoms of disease lurking in its tender frame, and which, if neglected, or injudiciously treated at first, might in a few hours baffle the physician's skill, and consign it to the grave.

And believe me, my fair friends, this is not a labour. What can so sweetly relieve the tedium of three or four weeks' confinement to a sick room, as to watch with unremitting care, and mark with enraptured eye, the opening beauties of the dear innocent cause of such confinement? Or what can equal a mother's ecstacy when she catches the first emanation of mind in the mantling smile of her babe? Kotzebue little knew the mother's heart when he makes Cora place her first joy after birth, “When first the white blossoms of his teeth appear, breaking the crimson buds that did encase them." Ten thousand raptures thrill her bosom before a tooth is formed. How dead to the finest feelings of our nature must that mother be who can voluntarily banish her infant from her bosom, and thus forego the exquisite delight attending the first development of its rational faculties. O fashion! arbitrary tyrant, of what hours of heartfelt bliss dost thou deprive thy votary

"One lovely babe her fostering care demands; "And can she trust it to a hireling's hands?"

Far distant, I trust, from our beloved coun

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