ARTIFICIAL DIET FOR INFANTS.
It should be as like the breast-milk as possible. This is obtained by a mixture
of cow's milk, water, and sugar, in the following proportions.
Fresh cow's milk, two thirds; Boiling water, or thin barley water, one third;
Loaf sugar, a sufficient quantity to sweeten.
This is the best diet that can be used for the first six months, after which
some farinaceous food may be combined.
In early infancy, mothers are too much in the habit of giving thick gruel,
panada, biscuit-powder, and such matters, thinking that a diet of a lighter kind
will not nourish. This is a mistake; for these preparations are much too solid;
they overload the stomach, and cause indigestion, flatulence, and griping. These
create a necessity for purgative medicines and carminatives, which again weaken
digestion, and, by unnatural irritation, perpetuate the evils which render them
necessary. Thus many infants are kept in a continual round of repletion,
indigestion, and purging, with the administration of cordials and narcotics,
who, if their diet were in quantity and quality suited to their digestive
powers, would need no aid from physic or physicians.
In preparing this diet, it is highly important to obtain pure milk, not
previously skimmed, or mixed with water; and in warm weather just taken from the
cow. It should not be mixed with the water or sugar until wanted, and not more
made than will be taken by the child at the time, for it must be prepared fresh
at every meal. It is best not to heat the milk over the fire, but let the water
be in a boiling state when mixed with it, and thus given to the infant tepid or
lukewarm.
As the infant advances in age, the proportion of milk may be gradually
increased; this is necessary after the second month, when three parts of milk to
one of water may be allowed. But there must be no change in the kind of diet if
the health of the child is good, and its appearance perceptibly improving.
Nothing is more absurd than the notion, that in early life children require a
variety of food; only one kind of food is prepared by nature, and it is
impossible to transgress this law without marked injury.
There are two ways by the spoon, and by the nursing-bottle. The first ought
never to be employed at this period, inasmuch as the power of digestion in
infants is very weak, and their food is designed by nature to be taken very
slowly into the stomach, being procured from the breast by the act of sucking,
in which act a great quantity of saliva is secreted, and being poured into the
mouth, mixes with the milk, and is swallowed with it. This process of nature,
then, should be emulated as far as possible; and food (for this purpose) should
be imbibed by suction from a nursing-bottle: it is thus obtained slowly, and the
suction employed secures the mixture of a due quantity of saliva, which has a
highly important influence on digestion. Whatever kind of bottle or teat is
used, however, it must never be forgotten that cleanliness is absolutely
essential to the success of this plan of rearing children.
Te quantity of food to be given at each meal ust be regulated by the age of the
child, and its digestive power. A little experience will soon enable a careful
and observing mother to determine this point. As the child grows older the
quantity of course must be increased.
The chief error in rearing the young is overfeeding; and a most serious one it
is; but which may be easily avoided by the parent pursuing a systematic plan
with regard to the hours of feeding, and then only yielding to the indications
of appetite, and administering the food slowly, in small quantities at a time.
This is the only way effectually to prevent indigestion, and bowel complaints,
and the irritable condition of the nervous system, so common in infancy, and
secure to the infant healthy nutrition, and consequent strength of constitution.
As has been well observed, "Nature never intended the infant's stomach to be
converted into a receptacle for laxatives, carminatives, antacids, stimulants,
and astringents; and when these become necessary, we may rest assured that there
is something faulty in our management, however perfect it may seem to
ourselves."
The frequency of giving food must be determined, as a general rule, by allowing
such an interval between each meal as will insure the digestion of the previous
quantity; and this may be fixed at about every three or four hours. If this rule
be departed from, and the child receives a fresh supply of food every hour or
so, time will not be given for the digestion of the previous quantity, and as a
consequence of this process being interrupted, the food passing on into the
bowel undigested, will there ferment and become sour, will inevitably produce
cholic and purging, and in no way contribute to the nourishment of the child.
The posture of the child when fed:- It is important to attend to this. It must
not receive its meals lying; the head should be raised on the nurse's arm, the
most natural position, and one in which there will be no danger of the food
going the wrong way, as it is called. After each meal the little one should be
put into its cot, or repose on its mother's knee, for at least half an hour.
This is essential for the process of digestion, as exercise is important at
other times for the promotion of health.
As soon as the child has got any teeth, and about this period one or two will
make their appearance, solid farinaceous matter boiled in water, beaten through
a sieve, and mixed with a small quantity of milk, may be employed. Or tops and
bottoms, steeped in hot water, with the addition of fresh milk and loaf sugar to
sweeten. And the child may now, for the first time, be fed with a spoon.
When one or two of the large grinding teeth have appeared, the same food may be
continued, but need not be passed through a sieve. Beef tea and chicken broth
may occasionally be added; and, as an introduction to the use of a more
completely animal diet, a portion, now and then, of a soft boiled egg; by and by
a small bread pudding, made with one egg in it, may be taken as the dinner meal.
Nothing is more common than for parents during this period to give their
children animal food. This is a great error. "To feed an infant with animal food
before it has teeth proper for masticating it, shows a total disregard to the
plain indications of nature, in withholding such teeth till the system requires
their assistance to masticate solid food. And the method of grating and pounding
meat, as a substitute for chewing, may be well suited to the toothless
octogenarian, whose stomach is capable of digesting it; but the stomach of a
young child is not adapted to the digestion of such food, and will be disordered
by it.
It cannot reasonably be maintained that a child's mouth without teeth, and that
of an adult, furnished with the teeth of carnivorous and graminivorous animals,
are designed by the Creator for the same sort of food. If the mastication of
solid food, whether animal or vegetable, and a due admixture of saliva, be
necessary for digestion, then solid food cannot be proper, when there is no
power of mastication. If it is swallowed in large masses it cannot be masticated
at all, and will have but a small chance of being digested; and in an undigested
state it will prove injurious to the stomach and to the other organs concerned
in digestion, by forming unnatural compounds. The practice of giving solid food
to a toothless child, is not less absurd, than to expect corn to be ground where
there is no apparatus for grinding it. That which would be considered as an
evidence of idiotism or insanity in the last instance, is defended and practised
in the former. If, on the other hand, to obviate this evil, the solid matter,
whether animal or vegetable, be previously broken into small masses, the infant
will instantly swallow it, but it will be unmixed with saliva. Yet in every
day's observation it will be seen, that children are so fed in their most tender
age; and it is not wonderful that present evils are by this means produced, and
the foundation laid for future disease."
The diet pointed out, then, is to be continued until the second year. Great
care, however, is necessary in its management; for this period of infancy is
ushered in by the process of teething, which is commonly connected with more or
less of disorder of the system. Any error, therefore, in diet or regimen is now
to be most carefully avoided. 'Tis true that the infant, who is of a sound and
healthy constitution, in whom, therefore, the powers of life are energetic, and
who up to this time has been nursed upon the breast of its parent, and now
commences an artificial diet for the first time, disorder is scarcely
perceptible, unless from the operation of very efficient causes. Not so,
however, with the child who from the first hour of its birth has been nourished
upon artificial food. Teething under such circumstances is always attended with
more or less of disturbance of the frame, and disease of the most dangerous
character but too frequently ensues. It is at this age, too, that all infectious
and eruptive fevers are most prevalent; worms often begin to form, and
diarrhoea, thrush, rickets, cutaneous eruptions, etc. manifest themselves, and
the foundation of strumous disease is originated or developed. A judicious
management of diet will prevent some of these complaints, and mitigate the
violence of others when they occur.
