Truly, the poor rickety child deserved to be cured. Snails also were used externally:

There were also "unguents to anoynt the Ricketted Childs breast," and various drinks to be given "to the patient childe fasting," as they termed him in what appears to us a half-comic, though wholly truthful appellation.

For worms and fits there were some frightful doses of senna and rhubarb and snails, with a slight redeeming admixture of prunes; and as for "Collick" and "Stomack-Ach," I feel sure every respectable Puritan patient child died rather than swallow the disgusting and nauseous compounds that were offered to him for his relief.

Puritan babies also wore medical ornaments, "anodyne necklaces." I find them advertised in the Boston Evening Post as late as 1771—"Anodine Necklaces for the Easy breeding of Childrens Teeth," worn as nowadays children wear strings of amber beads to avert croup.

Another medicine "to make childrens teeth come without paine" was this: "Take the head of a Hare boyled a walm or two or roahed; and with the braine thereof mingle Honey and butter and therewith anoynt the Childes gums as often as you please." Still further advice was to scratch the child's gums with an osprey bone, or to hang fawn's teeth or wolf's fangs around his neckn — an ugly necklace.

The first scene of gayety upon which the chilled baby opened his sad eyes was when his mother was taken from her great bed and "laid on a pallat," and the heavy curtains and valances of harrateen or serge were hung within and freshened with "curteyns and vallants of cheney or calico." Then, or a day or two later, the midwife, the nurses, and all the neighboring women who had helped with advice or work in the household during the first week or two of the child's life, were bidden to a dinner. This was also a French fashion, as "Les Caquets de l'Accouchée," the popular book of the time of Louis XIII, proves.