Children : Infancy, Part 5

Maintaining Health
by R. L. Alsaker

(Page 34 of 47)

Pardon a little repetition: If possible let the child nurse. If there is not enough milk, let the baby take what there is and give cow's milk in addition. If it is impossible to feed the baby at the breast, get the milk from a healthy cow that is kept clean, well fed and well treated. The cow's milk should be prepared as follows: Take equal parts of milk and water. Or take two parts of milk and one part of water. Mix, and to this may be added sugar of milk in the proportion of one level teaspoonful to the quart. Before feeding raise the temperature of the milk to about 104 degrees Fahrenheit, so that it will be about 100 degrees when fed. It is best to do the warming in a water bath.

Milk should not be kept long before being used. Limit the age to thirty-six hours after being drawn from the cow. Twenty-four hours would be better. The evening milk can safely be given to the infant the next day, if proper precautions have been taken. Ordinary milk is quite filthy and upon this babies do not thrive. Make an effort to get clean milk for the baby.

The albumin in human milk is largely of a kind which is not coagulated by souring, while nearly all the albumin in cow's milk coagulates. The uncoagulated albumin is digested and taken up more easily by the baby's nutritive system than that which is coagulated. This is one of the reasons that babies do not thrive so well on cow's milk as on their natural food.

The sugar of milk is not like refined sugar. Although it is not so easily dissolved in water, and therefore does not taste as sweet as refined sugar, it is better for the child. If sugar is added to the milk, milk sugar should be used. The druggists have it in powder form.

The addition of barley water and lime to the baby's milk is folly. The various forms of modified milk do not give as good results as the addition of water and a little milk sugar, as previously described. If you believe in such modifications as the top milk method and the addition of starchy substances and lime water, I refer you to your family physician or text-books on infant feeding.

It is difficult to improve on good cow's milk. It is well to remember that the human organism is very adaptable, even in infancy. The principal factors in infant feeding are cleanliness and moderation.

Bottle-fed babies should be given fruit or vegetable juices, or both, very early and it would be well to give a little of these juices to breast-fed babies too. The latter do not require as much as the former. Begin during the first month with a teaspoonful of orange juice put into the drinking bottle once a day. Increase gradually until at four or five months the amount may be from one to two tablespoonfuls. Do not be afraid to give the orange juice because it is acid, for it splits up quickly in the stomach and is rearranged, forming alkaline salts. It is the fruit that can be obtained at nearly all seasons. It is best to get mild oranges and strain the juice. The fruit is to be in prime condition. Instead of orange juice, the juice of raw celery, spinach, cabbage, apples, blackberries and other juicy fruits and vegetables may be employed, but these juices must all come from fruits or vegetables that are in prime condition. No sugar is to be added to either the fruit or the vegetable juices.

The mother's milk coagulates in small flakes, easily acted upon by the digestive juices, after which they are readily absorbed. Cow's milk coagulates into rather large pieces of albumin which are tough and therefore rather difficult to digest. This happens when the milk is taken rapidly and undiluted. However, when diluted and taken slowly this tendency is overcome to a great degree. For this reason it is best to get nipples with small perforations.

Either pasteurization or sterilization of milk is almost universally recommended by medical men. Even those who do not believe in such procedures generally fail to condemn them without qualifying statements. For a discussion of this fallacy I refer you to the chapter on milk.

Do not give the little ones any kinds of medicines. They always do harm and never any good. If any exception is made to this, it is in the line of laxatives or mild cathartics, such as small doses of castor oil, cascara segrada or mineral waters, but there is no excuse for giving metallic remedies, such as calomel. If the babies are fed in moderation on good foods they will not become constipated. If they are imprudently handled and become constipated it is necessary to resort to either the enema or some mild cathartic. Bear in mind that such remedies do not cure. They only relieve. The cure will come when the errors of life are corrected so that the body is able to perform its work without being obstructed.

Inoculations and vaccinations are serious blunders, often fatal. The animal products that are rubbed or injected into the little body are poisonous. They are the result of degenerative changes - diseases - in the bodies of rabbits, horses, cows and other animals. Nature's law is that health must be deserved or earned. Health means cleanliness, so it really is absurd to force into the body these products of animal decay. Statistics can be given, showing how beneficial these agents are, but they are misleading. In the days of public and official belief in witchcraft it was not difficult to prove the undoubted existence of witches. Whatever the public accepts as true can with the utmost ease be bolstered up with figures.

The use of serums, bacterins, vaccines and other products of the biologic laboratory is almost an obsession today. Their curative and preventive values are taken for granted. Most of the time the children are strong enough to throw off the poisons without showing prolonged or pronounced effects, but every once in a while a child is so poisoned that it takes months for it to regain health and too often death is the end. Sometimes the death takes place a few minutes after the injection, but we are informed that the medication had nothing to do with it. To poison the baby's blood deliberately is criminal. Give the little one a fair chance to live in health. A properly cared for baby will not be ill for one single day. Knowledge and good care will prevent sickness.