Food : Part 2

The Young Mother: Management of Children in Regard to Health
by William A. Alcott

(Page 8 of 37)

If it but lays the foundation of a constitutional fondness for excitements, it tends to disease. Indeed that, in itself, is a disease; and one, too, which is destroying more persons every year than the cholera, or even the consumption. Consumption has at most only slain her tens of thousands a year; but a fondness for exciting food and drink - innocent and harmless as it is often supposed to be, and therefore only the more dangerous a foe - does not fail to slay every year, directly or indirectly, its hundreds of thousands. At least this is my own opinion.

Why, where can you find the individual who is not a slave to this perpetual rage within - this perpetual cry, "Who will show us any" physical "good"? Who, in this land of abundance, will eat or drink plain things? Who will eat simple bread, meat, potatoes, rice, pudding, apples, &c. or drink simple water? A few instances may be found, of late, in which people confine themselves to simple water for drink; but they are rather rare. And no wonder. They must be rare so long as an unnatural thirst is kept up everywhere by the most exciting and most strange mixtures of food. Where, I again ask, is the person who will eat and relish plain bread, plain meat, plain puddings, &c.? Certainly not in the nursery. No young mother - scarcely one I mean - will, for a single meal, confine herself to a piece of bread, the sweetest and best food in the whole world, unless it is hot, or toasted, or soaked, or buttered. A natural, healthy appetite, is as rare a thing on our planet, almost, as an inhabitant of the sun or moon.

I have seen more than one mother made sick by using, while nursing, improper food and drink. I have known milk punch, taken by stealth - (because how could the mother, it was said, ever have a supply of food for her poor child without it!) - to kindle a fever that came very near burning up the mother and child both. And yet, if I have once or twice succeeded in convincing the mother that she was only suffering the natural punishment of her own transgressions, I have never, so far as I now recollect, succeeded in making her believe that her iniquities were visited upon her unoffending infant.

There is everywhere the most painful apathy on this most painful subject. We see little children of all ages, everywhere, the victims of debility, and pain, and suffering, and disease and death, and yet we very seldom seem to search for one moment for the causes of this premature destruction. In fact most parents - even many intelligent mothers - at once stare, if you attempt to inquire into the causes of their child's death, as if it was either a kind of sacrilege, or an impeachment of their own parental affection. Diseases, even at this day, with the sun of science blazing in meridian splendor, they seem to regard as the judgments of heaven; and to think of tracing out the causes of the early death of half our race, is, in their estimation, not only idle, but wicked.

Yet this is obviously one of the first steps, every, where, which philanthropy demands; to say nothing of the demands of christianity. It is the first step for the physician, the first step for the educator, the first step for the parent, and above all, the mother. Nay; more - we must not suppress so great and important a truth - it is the first step for the legislator and the minister. What sense is there in continuing, century after century, and age after age, to expend all our efforts in merely mending the diseased half of mankind, when those same efforts are amply sufficient, if early and properly applied, not only to continue the lives of the whole, but to make them whole beings, instead of passing through life mere fragments of humanity?

But I must not forget that this is merely a small manual, not intended for those who make it their profession to teach the laws of God and man, but simply for young mothers. For the sake of erring humanity, would that I could, but for one moment, divest myself of the idea, that in writing for the young mother I am not writing for legislators and ministers! Would that I could banish from my mind the deep conviction that the mother is everywhere far more the law-giver to her infant - far more the arbiter of the present and eternal destiny of her child - than he who is more commonly regarded as such.

Every mother owes it, not only to herself - for on this part she is not wholly forgetful - but to her offspring, to abstain, during the period of nursing at least, from all causes which tend to produce a feverish state of her fluids. Among these are every form of premature exertion, whether in sitting up, laboring, conversing, or even thinking. It is of very great importance that both the body and the mind should be kept quiet; and the more so, the better.

Among the particular causes of fever to the young mother, Dr. Dewees enumerates spirits, wine, and other fermented liquors, a room too much heated, closed curtains, confined air, too much exposure, and too much company; and during the early period of confinement, broths and animal food.

There is nothing which he insists on more strongly, than the importance of fresh air. Indeed, the practice of confining a nursing woman in a space scarcely six feet square, and excluding the air surrounding her by curtains and closed windows, and subjecting her to the necessity of breathing twenty times the air that has already been as often discharged, filled with poison, from her lungs, is not too strongly reprobated by Dr. Dewees, or anybody else. But I have spoken of these things in the chapter which treats on "The Nursery." I would only observe, on this point, that if I were asked what one thing is most indispensable to the health of the nursing woman, I would reply, Fresh air; and if asked what were the second and third most important things, I would still repeat - in imitation of the orator of old, in regard to another subject - Fresh air, Fresh air.

This important ingredient in human happiness, and especially in the happiness of the young mother and her tender infant, can usually be had within doors, if pains enough be taken. But if the weather is fine and in every respect favorable, a woman who is in tolerable health may venture abroad a little in about three weeks after her confinement, and sometimes even in two. Whether her exercise be without or within doors, however, she should be effectually protected against chills, and against the influence of currents of cold air.