The Young Mother Part 9

"But in time, the same oppressive cause continuing, the natural powers are overcome, being no longer able to throw off the unequal weight. The child, now unable to cry any more, languishes and is quiet.

"The misfortune is, that these complaints are not understood. The child is swaddled and crammed on, till, after gripes, purging, &c., it sinks under both burdens into a convulsion fit, and escapes farther torture.

This would be the case with the lamb, were it not killed, when full fat.

"That the present mode of nursing is wrong, one would think needed no other proof than the frequent miscarriages attending it, the death of many, and the ill health of those that survive. But what I am going to complain of is, that children, in general, are over-clothed and over-fed, and fed and clothed improperly. To these causes I attribute almost all their diseases.

"But the feeding of children is much more important to them than their clothing. Let us consider what nature directs in the case. If we follow nature, instead of leading or driving her, we cannot err. In the business of nursing, as well as physic, art, if it do not exactly copy this original, is ever destructive.

"If I could prevail, no child should ever be crammed with any unnatural mixture, till the provision of nature was ready for it; nor afterwards fed with any ungenial diet whatever, at least for the _first three months_; for it is not well able to digest and a.s.similate other elements sooner.

"I have seen very healthy children that never ate or drank anything whatever but their mother's milk, for the first ten or twelve months.

Nature seems to direct to this, by giving them no teeth till about that time. The call of nature should be waited for to feed them with anything more substantial; and the appet.i.te ought ever to precede the food--not only with regard to the daily meals, but those changes of diet which opening, increasing life requires. But this is never done, in either case; which is one of the greatest mistakes of all nurses.

"When the child requires more solid sustenance, we are to inquire what and how much is most proper to give it. We may be well a.s.sured there is a great mistake either in the quant.i.ty or quality of children's food, or both, as it is usually given them, because they are made sick by it; for to this mistake I cannot help imputing nine in ten of all their diseases.

"As to quant.i.ty, there is a most ridiculous error in the common practice; for it is generally supposed that whenever a child cries, it wants victuals: it is accordingly fed ten or twelve or more times in a day and night. This is so obvious a misapprehension, that I am surprised it should ever prevail.

"If a child's wants and motions be diligently and judiciously attended to, it will be found that it never cries, but from pain. Now the first sensations of hunger are not attended with pain; accordingly, a very young child that is hungry will make a hundred other signs of its want, before it will cry for food. If it be healthy, and quite easy in its dress, it will hardly ever cry at all. Indeed, these signs and motions I speak of are but rarely observed, because it seldom happens that children are ever suffered to be hungry.[Footnote: That which we commonly observe in them, in such cases, and call by the name of hunger, the Doctor, I suppose would regard as morbid or unnatural feeling, wholly unworthy of the name of HUNGER.]

"In a few, very few, whom I have had the pleasure to see reasonably nursed, that were not fed above two or three times in twenty-four hours, and yet were perfectly healthy, active, and happy, I have seen these signals, which were as intelligible as if they had spoken.

"There are many faults in the quality of children's food.

"1. It is not simple enough. Their paps, panadas, gruels, &c. are generally enriched with sugar, spices, and other nice things, and sometimes a drop of wine--none of which they ought ever to take. Our bodies never want them; they are what luxury only has introduced, to the destruction of the health of mankind.

"2. It is not enough that their food should be simple; it should also be light. Many people, I find, are mistaken in their notions of what is light, and fancy that most kinds of pastry, puddings, custards, &c. are light; that is, light of digestion. But there is nothing heavier, in this sense, than unfermented flour and eggs, boiled hard, which are the chief ingredients in some of these preparations.

"What I mean by light food--to give the best idea I can of it--is, any substance that is easily separated, and soluble in warm water. Good bread is the lightest thing I know, and the fittest food for young children. Cows' milk is also simple and light, and very good for them; but it is often injudiciously prepared. It should never be boiled; for boiling alters the taste and properties of it, destroys its sweetness, and makes it thicker, heavier, and less fit to mix and a.s.similate with the blood."

* * * * *

It is hardly necessary for me to repeat, that in these general views of Dr. C., with a few exceptions, I entirely concur; indeed some of them have already been presented. But I have expressed my doubts of the soundness of his conclusion in regard to sugar. Used with food, in very small quant.i.ty, by persons whose stomachs are already in a good condition, both sugar and mola.s.ses, especially the former, appear to me not only harmless, but wholesome and useful.

On the subject of simplicity in children's food, I should be glad to enlarge. There is nothing more important in diet than simplicity, and yet I think there is nothing more rare. To suit the fashion, everything must be mixed and varied. I have no objection to variety at different meals, both for children and adults; indeed I am disposed to recommend it, as will be seen hereafter. But I am utterly opposed to any considerable variety at the same meal; and above all, in a single dish.

The simpler a dish can be, the better.

But let us look, for a moment, at the dishes of food which are often presented, even at what are called plain tables.

Meats cannot be eaten--so many persons think--without being covered with mustard, or pepper, or gravy--or soaked in vinegar; and not a few regard them as insipid, unless several of these are combined. Few people think a piece of plain boiled or broiled muscle (lean flesh) with nothing on it but a little salt, is fit to be eaten. Everything, it is thought, must be rendered more stimulating, or acrid; or must be swimming in gravy, or melted fat or b.u.t.ter.

Bread, though proverbially the staff of life, can scarcely be eaten in its simple state. It must be b.u.t.tered, or honied, or toasted, or soaked in milk, or dipped in gravy. Puddings must have cherries or fruits of some sort, or spices in them, and must be sweetened largely. Or perhaps--more ridiculous still--they must have suet in them. And after all this is done, who can eat them without the addition of sauce, or b.u.t.ter, or mola.s.ses, or cream? Potatoes, boiled, steamed or roasted, delightful as they are to an unperverted appet.i.te, are yet thought by many people hardly palatable till they are mashed, and b.u.t.tered or gravied; or perhaps soaked in vinegar. In short, the plainest and simplest article for the table is deemed nearly unfit for the stomach, till it has been b.u.t.tered, and peppered, and spiced, and perhaps _pearlashed_. Even bread and milk must be filled with berries or fruits.

Where can you find many adults who would relish a meal which should consist entirely of plain bread, without any addition; of plain potatoes, without anything on them except a little salt; of a plain rice pudding, and nothing with it; or of plain baked or boiled apples or pears? And _could_ such persons be found, how many of them would bring up their children to live on such plain dishes?

It need not be wondered at, that a palate which has been so long tickled by variety, and by so many stimulating mixtures of food, should come to regard cold water for drink as insipid; and should feel dissatisfied with it, and desirous of boiling some narcotic or poisonous herb in it, or brewing it with something which will impart to it more or less of alcohol. The wonder is, not that some of our epicures become drunkards, but that all of them do not.

Dr. Cadogan alludes to a sad mistake everywhere made about _light_ food; and condemns, very justly, hard-boiled custards, pastry, &c. It is very strange that these substances--for these are among the injurious articles which I call mixtures--should ever have obtained currency in the world, to the exclusion of bread, which, as the same writer justly says, is among the lightest articles of food which are known.

It is strange, in particular, what views people have about bread.

Judging from what I see, I am compelled to believe that there are few who regard it in any other light than as a kind of necessary evil. They appear to eat it, not because they are fond of it, by itself, but because they _must_ eat it; or rather, because it is a fashionable article; and not to make believe they eat it, at the least, would be unfashionable. They will get rid of it, however, when they can. And when they must eat it, they soak it, or cover it with b.u.t.ter or milk, or something else which will render it tolerable--or toast it. And use it as they may, it must be hot from the oven. After it is once cold, very few will eat it. The idea, above all, of making a full meal of simple cold bread, twenty-four hours old, would be rejected by ninety-nine persons in a hundred; and by some with abhorrence.

People not only dislike bread, but regard it as unnutritious. I have heard many a fond parent say to the child who ate no meat, and seemed to depend almost wholly on bread--"Why, my dear child, you will starve if you eat no meat. Do at least put some b.u.t.ter on your bread or your potatoes." A thousand times have I been admonished, when eating my vegetable dinner during the hot and fatiguing days of summer--for I was bred to the farm, and ate little or no meat till I was fourteen years of age--to eat more b.u.t.ter, or cheese, or something that would give me strength; for I could not work, they said, without something more nourishing than bread and the other vegetables. And yet few if any boys of my age did more work, or performed it better, or with more ease, than myself. And I early observed the same thing in other vegetable eaters.

The truth is, there is nothing in the world better adapted to the daily wants of the human stomach than good bread; and few things more nutritious. There may be a little more nutriment in eggs or jelly; but if the former are hard-boiled, the stomach cannot digest them; and fat meat of any kind is digested with great difficulty. Indeed it is doubtful whether stomachs in temperate climates digest fat at all. They may dissolve it, but that is not making good chyle of it. They may even reduce it to chyle; _but chyle is not blood_. Fat may slip through the system without much of it _adhering_; and I think it pretty evident that it usually does so.

The muscle--the lean part of animals--may be nearly as nutritious as good bread, and is more easily digested. But it is very far from being proved that, for the healthy, those things are always best which are most easily digested. n.o.body will pretend that potatoes are better for us than bread; and yet the experiments of Dr. Beaumont seem to prove that boiled or roasted potatoes are much more quick and easy of digestion than bread of the first and best quality. Even over-boiled eggs and raw cabbage, bad as they are, are dissolved in the stomach, and appear to be digested as quick, if not quicker, than good wheat bread.

But n.o.body in the world will pretend they form more wholesome food.

Neither is meat--even _lean_ meat--necessarily more wholesome, or better calculated to give strength than bread, simply be cause it is more quickly and easily digested. It would be nearer the truth to say, that those substances which digest slowest (provided they do not irritate) are best adapted to the wants of the human stomach.

The philosopher LOCKE--perhaps from his knowledge of medicine--gives some excellent directions on this subject. "Great care should be used,"

be says, that the child "eat bread plentifully, both alone and with everything else; and whatever he eats that is solid, make him chew it well." This writer, by the way, supposed that the teeth were made to be used in beating our food; and that we ought neither to swallow it without chewing, as is customary in our busy New England, nor to mash or soak it in order to save the labor of mastication--a practice almost equally universal. But let us hear his own words.

"As for his diet, it ought to be very plain and simple; and if I might advise, flesh should be forborne, at least till he is two or three years old. But of whatever advantage this may be to his future health and strength, I fear it will hardly be consented to by parents, misled by the custom of eating too much flesh themselves, who will be apt to think their children--as they do themselves--in danger to be starved; if they have not flesh at least twice a day. This I am sure, children would breed their teeth with much less danger, be freer from diseases while they were little, and lay the foundations of a healthy and strong const.i.tution much surer, if they were not crammed so much as they are, by fond mothers and foolish servants, and were kept wholly from flesh the first three or four years of their lives."

Were Locke still living, I should like to interrogate him at this place. He first speaks of giving children no meat till they are two or three years old; and then afterwards extends the period to three or four. The question I would put is this: If the child is healthier without meat till he is three or four years old, why not till he is thirteen or fourteen; or even till thirty, or forty, or seventy? And is not Professor Stuart, of Andover--a meat eater himself, and an advocate for its moderate use by those who have already been trained to the use of it--is not the Professor, I say, more than half right when he a.s.serts, as I have heard him, that it may be well to train all children, from the first, to the exclusive use of vegetable food?

I have a few more extracts from Locke, particularly on the subject of bread.

"I should think that a good piece of well made and well baked brown bread would be often the best breakfast for my young master. I am sure it is as wholesome, and will make him as strong a man, as greater delicacies; and if he be used to it, it will be as pleasant to him.

"If he, at any time, call for victuals between meals, use him to nothing but dry bread. If he be hungry more than wanton, bread will go down; and if he be not hungry, it is not fit that he should eat. By this you will obtain two good effects. First, that by custom he will come to be in love with bread; for, as I said, our palates and stomachs, too, are pleased with the things we are used to. Another good you will gain hereby is, that you will not teach him to eat more nor oftener than nature requires.

"I do not think that all people's appet.i.tes are alike; some have naturally stronger and some weaker stomachs. But this I think, that many are made gormands and gluttons by custom, that were not so by nature. And I see, in some countries, men as l.u.s.ty and strong, that eat but two meals a day, as those that have set their stomachs, by a constant usage, to call on them for four or five.

"The Romans usually fasted till supper, the only set meal, even of those who ate more than once in a day; and those who used breakfasts, as some did at eight, same at ten, others at twelve of the clock, and some later, neither ate flesh nor had anything made ready for them.

"Augustus, when the greatest monarch on the earth, tells us he took a piece of dry bread in his chariot; and Seneca, in his 83d epistle, giving an account how be managed himself when he was old, and his age permitted indulgence, says that he used to eat a piece of dry bread for his dinner, without the formality of sitting to it. Yet Seneca, as it is well known, was wealthy.

"The masters of the world were brought up with this spare diet, and the young gentlemen of Rome felt no want of strength or spirit because they ate but once a day. Or if it happened by chance that any one could not fast so long as till supper, their only set meal, he took nothing but a bit of dry bread, or at most a few raisins or some such slight thing with it, to stay his stomach. And more than one set meal a day was thought so monstrous that it was a reproach, as low as Caesar's time, to make an entertainment, or sit down to a table, till towards sunset.

Therefore I judge it most convenient that my young master should have nothing but bread for breakfast. I impute a great part of our diseases in England to our eating too much flesh, and too little bread. Dry bread, though the best nourishment, has the least temptation."

I shall not undertake to defend all the sentiments of Mr. Locke in these extracts; but in regard to the main point--the nutritive properties and wholesome tendency of bread, and the importance of making it a princ.i.p.al article of diet for children--I think his views are just. In short, they do not differ, substantially, from those of a large proportion of the best writers on this subject in every country, during the last three hundred years. As if with one voice, they dissuade from the use of too much animal food for the young, and encourage the use of a larger proportion of vegetable food--bread, plain puddings, rice, potatoes, turnips, beets, apples, pears, &c., and milk.

Yet they all, or nearly all, seem to write just as if they did not expect to be believed; or if believed, to be followed. They seem to regard mankind as so inveterately attached to old habits, and so much addicted to flesh eating, that there is little hope of reclaiming them.

Now, though my opinions are no more ent.i.tled to respect than many of theirs, I hope for greater success than they appear to do. I expect that many young mothers who read this work, will be led to think and inquire further on the subject; and if they find that the views here advanced are in accordance with reason, and common sense, and higher authority, I am not without hope that they will reform, and do what they can to reform their neighbors.

I have dwelt the longer, in this section, on the _general_ principles of diet, because I am of opinion that whatever is true, on this subject, in regard to the diet of children, soon after weaning, is equally, or nearly equally applicable to the whole of childhood, youth, manhood and age. It is not true that one period of life, and one mode of employment, demands a diet essentially different from that which is demanded at another period, and in other circ.u.mstances; provided always, that the individual is in health. Occasional instances of the kind, there may be; but they are not numerous.

The digestive powers of the young are more nearly as strong as those of the adult than is usually admitted, and they are much more active. They require a less quant.i.ty of food, undoubtedly; and they should be fed at shorter intervals. But as a general rule, what is best for them, as regards its quality, at three years old, is best for them at thirty; or, should they live so long, at ninety. I repeat it; there is very little difference in the nature of the food required ever after teething.

Let me not be understood as saying that the strong, and the robust, and the active cannot digest food which the weak, and enervated, and indolent cannot. Undoubtedly they can. But this does not prove that they _ought_ to do it. It does not prove that their strength and vigor were not given them for other purposes than to be expended on the poorer substances for food, when they might have better. Nor is it true, as often pretended, that the hard laborer needs either more food, or that which is of a stronger quality, just in proportion to the severity of his labor. The man or the child who labors moderately, just sufficient for the purposes of health, and labors with his hands in the open air, needs rather _more_ food than the indolent or the sedentary, or those who labor to excess; but not that which is of a stronger quality. It is he who labors to excess--if any difference of quality were required at all--who should eat milder food, as well as less in quant.i.ty.

Some physicians there are who tell us that all mankind would live longer, as well as be more healthful, if they ate nothing but bread, and drank nothing but water. It may be so, but I do not believe it. Water, as I shall show hereafter, is indeed the only appropriate drink; but I do not believe that bread, even after the second year, is in all cases and circ.u.mstances the best food. Besides that the experiments of Majendie and other physiologists go a little way--though not far, I confess--to prove that animals generally, (and if so, why not man, as well as the rest?) thrive best with some degree of variety in their food, it seems to me more in accordance with the general intentions of the Creator, so far as we can discover what they are.

While, therefore, I deny that either milk or bread is better, in all cases, for human sustenance, than any other articles of food, I must, at the same time, be permitted to regard them as among the best, and as deserving more general attention. Every infant, after leaving the breast, should, as it seems to me, make bread, in some of its forms, a chief article of food.

This article, so justly and emphatically called the staff of life, may be found in almost every country. Common sense seems to have dictated the propriety of its use; though fashion has often led us to overlook or despise it--like air, and fire, and water, and nearly every other common but indispensable blessing.

The best kind of bread is made from wheat, the worst from bark, saw-dust, &c. Wood and bark afford so little nutriment, that it is only in such countries as Norway, Sweden, Lapland. Iceland, Greenland, and Siberia, that the inhabitants can be induced to make use of them. Here they are often useful; either because people cannot get food which is better, or to blend with their fat or oily animal food. For it should never be forgotten, that healthy digestion requires a large proportion of innutritious matter along with the pure nutriment. In order to make bread from wheat, the meal should not be bolted. If it seems to contain particles which are too coa.r.s.e, it may be well to pa.s.s it through a coa.r.s.e family sieve; but the best bread I have ever eaten, as well as the cleanest and neatest, was not sifted at all.