Nevertheless, alcohol is not essential, and for the most part I give none, except the small amount--some four per cent .-- present in fluid malt extracts.

Even this is found to excite certain persons, and it is in such cases easy to substitute the thicker extracts of malt, or the Japanese extract, made from barley and rice.
So soon as my patient begins to take other food than milk, and sometimes even before this, I like to give iron in large doses.

In hospital practice the old subcarbonate answers very well, being cheap, and not unpalatable when shaken up in water or given in an effervescent draught of carbonated waters.

In private practice large doses of salts of iron, as four to six grains of lactate at meal-time, are satisfactory; but the form of iron is of less moment than the amount.
Very often I meet with women who cannot take iron, either because it disturbs the stomach, causes headache, or constipates, or else because they have been told never to take iron.

In the latter case I simply add five grains of the pyrophosphate to each ounce of malt, and give it thus for a month unknown to the patients.