Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why: What Medical Writers SayAllen, Martha Meir
Science
Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why: What Medical Writers Say
Allen, Martha Meir
Alcohol -- Physiological effect; Temperance
when every means have been taken to ensure the sweetness,
freshness and niceness, not only of the milk and water, but of
the bottle and of the teat, and the child still fails to get on,
that, in rare cases, I advise the admixture of a little
farinaceous matter, in the way of food containing one part milk,
and two parts of properly sweetened barley-water. As the milk
teeth come through, other farinaceous matter may be gradually
blended with the milk, and there is nothing better than to begin
at about eight months with a teaspoonful of baked flour, well
boiled in a pint of milk and water, or in the water, to be
afterwards cooled with milk. Oftentimes a little salt, as well
as sugar, will materially help its digestion. The child will do
well on that food--the quantity being duly increased--until it
has cut almost all its milk teeth, when it may eat bread and
butter, rice, and egg puddings, and occasionally eat a boiled
egg once a day. I believe that it is a great mistake to give red
flesh meat to children in their early years, unless there be
some very special reason for it, and then it should only be
temporarily used; but nice potatoes, flavored with fresh gravy
from a joint, may be given at dinner, as the child becomes able
to feed itself. * * * * *
"Bear in mind that when you take wine, beer or brandy, you are
distilling that wine, beer or brandy into your child's body.
Probably nothing could be worse than to have the very fabric of
the child's tissues laid down from alcoholized blood."
Another English physician deplores "the pernicious habit of drinking
large quantities of ale or stout by nursing mothers, under the idea that
they thereby increase and improve the secretion of milk, whereas they
are in reality deteriorating the quality of that upon which the infant
must depend for health and life."
Dr. Edis says:--
"Infant mortality is mainly due to two causes, the substitution
of farinaceous food for milk, and the delusion that ale or beer
is necessary as an article of diet for nursing mothers. * * * *
* Countless disorders among infants are due simply and solely to
the popular fallacy, that the nursing mother cannot properly
fulfil her duties, unless she resorts to the aid of alcoholics."
Dr. N. S. Davis says:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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