A Book of Medical Discourses, in Two PartsCrumpler, Rebecca Lee
Science
A Book of Medical Discourses, in Two Parts
Crumpler, Rebecca Lee
Child care; Children -- Health and hygiene; Infants -- Care; Infants -- Health and hygiene; Women -- Health and hygiene
The goat furnishes an even diet for infants, but its milk is not so easy
to obtain in large cities.
Milk should be given to a child in its purity, not deprived of the cream
or watered. Watering is equal to skimming, and _vice versa_. And when
the child has never known the taste of its mother’s milk, I can see no
philosophy in directing the milk to be watered and sweetened to make it
taste like breast-milk.
All attempts to increase the quantity of babes’ food by watering are
indeed robbery, as relates to the infants; such weakening should only be
practised for special reasons. But to insure success, pure milk, or
cream with some water, should be the rule, not the exception.
In a warm atmosphere the milk or cream should be made scalding hot by
setting it in a vessel of boiling water, and stirring it the while.
Boiling deprives it of the cream and other nutritive properties. There
should be no more warmed than is to be used up. The warming should be by
putting the milk in the bottle, then placing the latter in hot water a
few minutes. In this way the quality and temperature of the drink
remains uniform. The capacity of the bottle selected should be about one
ounce. The material of which the black elastic nipple is composed, is
not supposed to injure the mouth. No sugar should be added.
Babes have been raised to a fine size on various kinds of porridge; and
they can be supported by putting a piece of clean linen into the shape
of a teat, fastening a soft string about it so that it may be held by
the nurse or any one, while food is poured into it from a spoon. Many
are the times that I have fed them in that way. I never thought of
laying them down to feed themselves.
Milk may be used just as it comes from the animal; it is only in cases
where it is kept on hand for a day that it really need be scalded.
So much emphasis has been put upon the necessity of water as a
constituent of baby diet, that it is almost venturing too far to remind
any of the fact that most milk dealers are careful that this constituent
shall be already supplied.
Formerly, dropsical, emaciated, half-starved, fretful babes were very
numerous; but since, of late, judicious legislation has been brought to
bear on the matter of adulterating milk, things have changed.
Henceforth we may hope to hear that infantile deaths from this probable
cause decrease annually.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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