Instead of changing the nurse's usual diet, I think it would be
enough to give food in larger quantities and better of its kind.
It is not the nature of the food that makes a vegetable diet
indigestible, but the flavouring that makes it unwholesome. Reform
your cookery, use neither butter nor oil for frying. Butter, salt,
and milk should never be cooked. Let your vegetables be cooked
in water and only seasoned when they come to table. The vegetable
diet, far from disturbing the nurse, will give her a plentiful
supply of milk. [Footnote: Those who wish to study a full account
of the advantages and disadvantages of the Pythagorean regime, may
consult the works of Dr. Cocchi and his opponent Dr. Bianchi on
this important subject.] If a vegetable diet is best for the child,
how can meat food be best for his nurse? The things are contradictory.
Fresh air affects children's constitutions, particularly in early
years. It enters every pore of a soft and tender skin, it has
a powerful effect on their young bodies. Its effects can never
be destroyed. So I should not agree with those who take a country
woman from her village and shut her up in one room in a town and
her nursling with her. I would rather send him to breathe the fresh
air of the country than the foul air of the town. He will take his
new mother's position, will live in her cottage, where his tutor
will follow him. The reader will bear in mind that this tutor is
not a paid servant, but the father's friend. But if this friend
cannot be found, if this transfer is not easy, if none of my advice
can be followed, you will say to me, "What shall I do instead?" I
have told you already--"Do what you are doing;" no advice is needed
there.
Men are not made to be crowded together in ant-hills, but scattered
over the earth to till it. The more they are massed together, the
more corrupt they become. Disease and vice are the sure results of
over-crowded cities. Of all creatures man is least fitted to live
in herds. Huddled together like sheep, men would very soon die.
Man's breath is fatal to his fellows. This is literally as well as
figuratively true.
Men are devoured by our towns. In a few generations the race dies
out or becomes degenerate; it needs renewal, and it is always
renewed from the country. Send your children to renew themselves,
so to speak, send them to regain in the open fields the strength
lost in the foul air of our crowded cities. Women hurry home that
their children may be born in the town; they ought to do just the
opposite, especially those who mean to nurse their own children. They
would lose less than they think, and in more natural surroundings
the pleasures associated by nature with maternal duties would soon
destroy the taste for other delights.