Publisher's Synopsis
From the PREFACE.
THE CIRCULATION of my four Books is very large: Forty-seven thousand copies of Advice to a Wife, forty-seven thousand copies of Advice to a Mother, ten thousand copies (including the present edition) of Counsel to a Mother, and two thousand copies (first edition) of Aphorisms for Parents have already been published -- making an aggregate of my four books, and of the English Editions alone, of upwards of 100,000 copies. The aggregate sale for the one year -- the last -- amounts to about 15,000 copies -- equivalent, in one twelve-months, to fifteen ordinary editions, and still the sale rapidly increases.
I again wish to call my reader's particular attention to the milk-water-salt-and-sugar food (page 19), as one of the best -- if not the very best -- substitutes either for a mother's or for a wet-nurse's milk. Some of the finest children I have ever seen have been brought up upon it -- and upon it alone -- from their birth until they have been seven or nine months old; until, indeed, they have begun to cut their teeth; I mean, of course, when the mothers themselves were totally unfit -- as, unfortunately they frequently were, and are -- to suckle their own babes. If this food be used -- it should be used in its integrity, and with all the precautions and directions as advised in the text. It more resembles a mother's own milk than any other food I am acquainted with: hence the secret of its great Success.
I have been frequently asked by patients as to the desirability, or otherwise, of their substituting Condensed Milk for new milk for their children. I have, in this edition, replied to such inquiries. Much additional matter has been added to this edition; among the rest a chapter "On Costive Bowels" (page 239) -- a subject demanding deep consideration, as the constant giving to a child, and, indeed, to everyone else, aperient medicine is pregnant with danger, and alike subversive of comfort, of comeliness, of health, of strength, and happiness, and is a bungling, blundering, and barbarous method of opening the bowels of a child who is habitually costive. (See, likewise, page 56.) The majority of cases of habitual costiveness is due to the administration of aperients; if a child never does take an aperient, he, as a rule, never requires one -- his bowels not being costive -- of this I am quite convinced. The frequent giving a costive child aperients is a grievous ill: it predisposes him to cold; it weakens his digestion; it knocks the strength out of him; it confirms his costiveness; it prepares the way for many and serious diseases. High time it is that attention was called to the subject, and that means were used to abate the wide-spread evil, and thus to stay "the slaughter of the innocents." Having devoted much labour in preparing this third edition, I flatter myself that I have greatly improved it. I resign it into the hands of my fair readers and of my numerous friends and patients -- assuring them that I have lost no opportunity, and have spared neither time nor pains to make this book still more worthy of their approval and of their acceptance. In conclusion: I wish to impress the following facts -- for they are facts -- deeply into my reader's mind: Many of the diseases, and a large percentage of the deaths of children, are preventable; but, then, vigilance, discipline, and good management must rule in the nursery and in the household generally. These pages are intended to help a mother in her arduous undertakings, and to smooth her path through difficulties, dangers, and perplexities. "Prosper Thou the works of our hands upon us, O prosper Thou our handy-work." --PYE HENRY CHAVASSE.
