Advice to a Mother on the Management of Her ChildrenChavasse, Pye Henry
Science
Advice to a Mother on the Management of Her Children
Chavasse, Pye Henry
Child care; Children -- Health and hygiene; Infants -- Health and hygiene
The great desideratum, in devising an infant's formula for food, is to
make it, until he be nine months old, to resemble as much as possible,
a mother's own milk, and which my formula, as nearly as is
practicable, does resemble hence its success and popularity.
As soon as a child begins to cut his teeth the case is altered, and
_farinaceous food, with milk and with water_, becomes an absolute
necessity.
I wish, then, to call your especial attention to the following-facts,
for they are facts--Farinaceous foods, _of all kinds_, before a child
_commences_ cutting his teeth (which is when he is about six or seven
months old) are worse than useless--they are, positively, injurious,
they are, during the early period of infant life, perfectly
indigestible, and may bring on--which they frequently do--
convulsions. A babe fed on farinaceous food alone would certainly die
of starvation, for, "up to six or seven months of age, infants have
not the power of digesting farinaceous or fibrinous substances"--Dr
Letheby on _Food_.
A babe's salivary glands, until he be six or seven months old, does
not secrete its proper fluid--namely, ptyalin, and consequently the
starch of the farinaceous food--and all farinaceous food contains
starch--is not converted into dextrine and grape-sugar, and is,
therefore, perfectly indigestible and useless--nay, injurious to an
infant, and may bring on pain and convulsions, and even death, hence,
the giving of farinaceous food, until a child be six or seven months
old, is one and the principal cause of the frightful infant mortality
at the present time existing in England, and which is a disgrace to
any civilized land!
In passing, allow me to urge you never to stuff a babe--never to
overload his little stomach with food, it is far more desirable to
give him a little not enough, than to give him a little too much. Many
a poor child has been, like a young bird, killed with stuffing. If a
child be at the breast, and at the breast alone, there is no fear of
his taking too much, but if he be brought up on artificial food, there
is great fear of his over loading his stomach. Stuffing a child brings
on vomiting and bowel-complaints, and a host of other diseases which
now it would be tedious to enumerate. Let me, then, urge you on no
account, to over load the stomach of a little child.
There will, then, in many cases, be quite sufficient nourishment in
the above. I have known some robust infants brought up on it, and on
it along, without a particle of farinaceous food, or of any other
food, in any shape or form whatever. But if it should not agree with
the child, or if there should not be sufficient nourishment in it,
then the food recommended in answer to No. 34 question ought to be
given, with this only difference--a little new milk must from the
beginning be added, and should be gradually increased, until nearly
all milk be used.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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