HOME PAGE    HEALTH LIBRARY CATALOG

Front Matter Introduction I Disease--Two Views II The Slaughter of The Innocents III Prenatal Care IV Babies Should be Born in the Spring V Baby's Growth and Development VI The Child's Teeth VII Teething VIII Fat Babies IX Mother's Milk X Should Baby be Weaned XI Three Year Nursing Period XII Cows Milk XIII Pasteurization XIV Three Feedings a Day

XV No Starch for Infants XVI "ReguIar" Crimes in Feeding XVII Feeding of Infants XVIII Baby's General Care XIX Feeding Children from two to six years XX A Healthy Child XXI Undernutrition XXII The Acute "Infectious" Diseases of Childhood XXIII Skin Disorders XXIV Common Disorders of Infants and Children XXV Child Education XXVI Corporal Punishment XVII Vaccinia XXVIII Serum Poisoning XXIX Commercial Medicine

    "Before we examine the effects of vitamin C deficiencies upon the teeth of monkeys, let me remind you that all of our efforts to affect these teeth by fermentation in the mouth for long periods of time by the feeding and injection of micro-organisms associated with caries have been unavailing so long as the diet was normal."

    Experiments by Drs. Howe and Hatch (1917) in America and by Sir James McIntosh, Warwick James and Lazarus Barlow, working together in England, in trying to produce dental carries by using acid forming bacteria all resulted negatively. Dr. Howe says that:

    "So long as the diet is normal it has been found impossible to cause dental caries or pyorrhea by maintaining fermentation in the mouth or by feeding or injecting the bacteria believed to be most actively associated with dental caries."

    

    
CHAPTER VII.
TEETHING

    It was, until a few years ago, the almost universal opinion among civilized man, and it is still the prevailing opinion among most of these, that when an infant begins to teeth it is peculiarly liable to intestinal and other disorders and many deaths are attributed to this cause. Any disorder which may occur while an infant is teething is at once ascribed to the teething, and it is thought that the baby's illness is an unavoidable misfortune.

    Never was there a greater mistake. The ignorance of parents, attendants and physicians is the real misfortune in these cases. For, sickness is in no sense the result of the process of teething. "Can it be supposed," asks Dr. Page, "by even the most ignorant, that the cutting of the teeth was an afterthought of the Creator, and that since the little ones generally come into the world toothless, this great mistake could be corrected only by a painful and dangerous abnormal process?"

    It is absurd to even imagine that the Creator has inflicted the young with an abnormal physiological process which is dangerous to life. Cutting the teeth is a perfectly natural process and should not be anticipated with dread or anxiety nor blamed for troubles which may develop during the teething period.

    Practically every child, from the age of six months to two and a half years, is cutting teeth almost continuously. It is an undeniable fact that most children cut all their teeth without any trouble whatsoever. But because the process of teething is almost continuous for a period of two years, it is practically impossible for the child to develop any trouble during this period, which is not coincident with the cutting of teeth. Multitudes of infants do become sick with stomach and bowel disorders during this time and mothers and grandmothers, and sometimes even physicians blame these troubles on the teething when the trouble and the teething are merely coincidental and are not related to each other as cause and effect.

    In a few cases the child may be made temporarily irritable and fussy and may lose its appetite. This is especially likely to be so where the teeth erupt late and three to six of them come through at once. But it is due in most cases to over feeding. Teething does not produce any of the derangements it is accused of causing. These troubles are always due to other causes.

    The common practice of rubbing an inflamed gum with paregoric is stupid. The drug possesses no local anesthetic action and can relieve the pain only if the baby swallows enough of this vicious dope to stupefy it.

    A nipple dipped in cold water and placed in the baby's mouth and renewed every few minutes will give temporary relief. But the most important measure is to stop all food, save, perhaps, orange juice until the feverishness and fretfulness are passed. This will lessen the pain, reduce the inflammation and prevent the digestive derangement present in such cases from developing into a more serious condition.

    Many babies cut their teeth, early or late, in rapid succession with little or no disturbance to them and there is no reason why all of them should not do so providing only that they are properly cared for and are maintained in good health.

    Where there is slight inflammation of the gum with restlesness and discomfort, a reduction of the child's food will soon remedy this. It is my practice to take all milk from such a child and give it only fruit juice, preferably orange juice.

    Yet there is a popular superstition that baby requires more and "stronger" food at this time. Dr. Page says: "I refer the backwardness of teething, that is, the delay and difficulty and sickness so common, in many instances to fatty degeneration caused by excessive feeding; and the consequent cessation of the normal growth of the body, including, of course, the teeth."

    Most animals are born with a mouth full of teeth, but they usually also cut some teeth after birth, but without difficulty or distress. Children seldom or never have difficulty with their second set of teeth, due, no doubt, to the fact that these erupt after the period of forced feeding is passed. Among savage children the teething period is not dreaded.

    In his Shut Your Mouth, Catlin quotes the Register General of England as saying that 3660 infants died in England each year under one year of age "from the pains of teething." At the same time Catlin could not find any evidence of Indian children dying from teething. A Sioux Chieftain told him that the children 'always seemed to suffer more or less at that period, but that he did not believe that in the whole Sioux Tribe a child ever died from that cause." The Pawnee- Picts told him their "children never die in teething."

    After comparing the enormous quantities of milk fed to infants with the relative amount a man would consume, if fed as the infant is fed, Dr. Page says: "Is it to be wondered at that the alimentary canal, from mouth to anus, becomes irritated, and the whole body, including the gums, becomes inflamed, in the case of our food-salivated infant, whose purging wetting, nose- running, and drooling, attest to nature's efforts to get rid of the excess? And when, in due time the teeth ought to appear, they prove to have become 'stunted,' like the bones and muscles of the ribs, legs and arms, either through fatty degeneration or for want of the nourishment of which they have been deprived by reason of the inability of the diseased organs to digest and assimilate enough food. Nature is crying out for the nourishment impossible to obtain from undigested and unassimilated food--she cries out for growth--and there must be an upheaval, a 'cure'.

    "When diarrhea or cholera infantum have purged and cleansed the body of its impurities, including more or less of the fat--when the cure is effected, or well under way, and the general growth of the body resumed, the teeth also resume their growth and begin to make their appearance. It is not, perhaps, strange, in view of the universal belief in the superstition, that under such circumstances the cause of the sickness is attributed to 'teething.' "

    Dr. Tilden says: "The great sensitiveness of the gums in teething children is caused by the general systemic derangement. When these little folks are properly cared for, they will not be sick, and if they are not sick they will surprise their mothers by showing them a tooth every little while, without the slightest suspicion of any kind."

    

    
CHAPTER VIII.
FAT BABIES

    A farmer once remarked to Dr. Page, in discussing the tenderness of his pig-pork which he had raised himself, "why, even the bones are so tender, they are almost as soft as the flesh itself."

    Fat, rachitic children present about this same condition. But mothers, nurses and doctors all, as a rule, answer well to Dr. Felix Oswald's description in the following words from his Physical Education (P. 202):

    "The representative nurse believes in cramming; babies like prize-pigs, are most admired when they are ready to die with fatty degeneration. The child is coaxed to suckle almost every half-hour, day after day, till habit begets a morbid appetite, analogous to the dyspeptic's stomach distress which no food can relieve till overrepletion brings on a sort of gastric lethargy."

    The fat-disease is developed in infants as early as possible for everyone admires a fat baby. Such babies, however, are like fat animals; their muscles are very lean and attenuated. Mutton and beef, when excessively fat have very little muscle, and this is so "tender" that it hardly merits the name muscle. Fat hogs have very little muscle, sometimes being actually unable to stand up or to get to the trough to eat. Such hogs are well adapted to fill lard-cans but they are not the kind that supply meat eaters with ham or breakfast bacon. Such hogs are by no means healthy animals.

    Of the fat babies so much admired, Dr. Page says -- "The excessive fat, so generally regarded as a sign of a healthy babe, is as truly a state of actual disease as when it occurs at adult age. Not only are the muscles enveloped with fat--they are mixed with it throughout and so are the vital organs--the kidneys, liver, heart, etc. Dissection, in these cases, often discloses the fact that these organs are enlarged and degenerated with fat; the liver, for example, is often double the normal size. The disease finally culminates in one of two things--a considerable period of nongrowth, or a violent sickness, which strips them of the fat, if not of life."

    No farmer would think of fattening his growing animals. He knows that this stunts their growth. The same farmer adores his baby when it is "as fat as a butter-ball." The wise farmer has learned that early fattening stunts the growth of pigs, and does not permit them to fatten after they are weaned--they very rarely posses any surplus weight when weaned. The farmer who fattens his pigs never rears the largest hogs. Growing pigs and shoats are fed just enough to keep them growing steadily. They are fattened only after a large, healthy frame is secured.

    Animals are born little more than "skin and bones" and are never, with the few exceptions of hibernating animals, fattened, unless man fattens them. Calves that are intended for a useful life are never fattened by the farmer. The young colt is never fattened by nursing.

    Examine a litter of kittens and you will find that, however round and plump they may appear, this is due chiefly to fur and not to fat. But you cannot question or doubt their health or the rapidity of their growth.

    We may safely put it down as a general rule, that animals do not fatten early in life. On the other hand, we know from our experience with our domestic animals that when animals are fattened while very young they do not grow and develop so well.

    Most of us are aware of the evils of fat in the adult animal and man. We know that the trainer of race horses carefully removes all fat from his horses before entering them in the races. The hunter knows that he cannot hunt with a fat hound. The wrestler, boxer, runner and other athletes are in the "pink of condition" and ready to do their best work when there is no fat left on their bodies.

    Knowing these things, why do we point with pride to our fat offspring? Why are we so proud of a fat baby? Only a few days before I wrote the above lines there was held here in the city of San Antonio a contest in which prizes were offered for the babies and children who weighed the most at certain ages. The winners weighed from twice to three times what they should. The announcement of the winners and their weights caused my mind to run back to my boyhood days when we used to fatten hogs to kill.

    Why not give prizes to the best developed children? Why not offer prizes for the healthiest children? Why offer prizes for those children who show the greatest amount of fatty degeneration--who present the worst stages of the fat-disease? Fat babies are not healthy babies. Why encourage a people, already over-burned with ignorance, to build disease in their children?

    Fat and plethoric children, with cheeks so red one can almost feel the fever in them, when he looks at them, are regarded as healthy children. In excessively fat infants says Dr. Page, there: "Follows one of three things--death; a saving sickness; or a feverish freful state, with a gradual reduction of fat, an emaciated stage, when perhaps for a year his body and limbs resemble those of a calf, a kitten, or a young robbin. Under this 'raw bone' state he grows as do the young of other species. The body and limbs stretch out and he grows tall." After a time their digestive powers recuperated, another period of fattening begins. Each year death eliminates thousands who are unable to endure the strain. "This culling process goes on, in a lessening degree, up to about the age of five, when the spindling age is fairly set with the survivors, and there is a corresponding exemption from disease, the proportion of deaths from five to twenty-five being very small."

    All around us we see these fat, over-fed babies and children with running noses, difficult breathing, frequent colds, spells of feverishness, etc. If such children live, they gradually "work out of the fat stage into a correspondingly ematiated stage, seldom retaining a fair degree of roundness all the way along."

    Surfeiting has gotten in its work. At the ages of ten or twelve, or even younger, we see these once fat specimens, "thin, cadaverous, with fitful appetites; eating at times like cormorants, of such things as they 'like,' at others having no appetite at all."

    Fat babies are usually stupid. They usually present an appearance of dullness which is quite a contrast to the appearance and action of healthy and well-fed babies. At a later period, those who survive infancy, and learn to use their legs "run off the fat," and become not only brighter in appearance but more muscular also than during their fat stage.

    The normal condition of man is not that of obesity at any age. Why, then, are parents so anxious to see their babies fatten up at the rate of a pound a week during their first few months of life? Why their anxiety to have "the fattest baby in the neighborhood," and "consequently the one most likely to die before it is a year old?" Ignorance, just plain ignorance, is the answer. They run the digestive organs of their babies at high pressure and keep them laying on fat, their little stomachs, which, are treated like toy balloons, vomiting. up what milk they cannot possibly retain, until finally, these little stomachs are so overworked that they no longer possess power to digest anything.

    When this stage is reached parents and physicians begin a fruitless search for something that will "agree with baby's stomach" The only thing that will agree with such a stomach is rest, and if it does not receive this, serious illness and, perhaps, death, will be sure to follow. Such a child will waste away from want of nourishment--starve from surfeiting.

    Infants are frequency saved from this fatty degeneration and its attending evils, due to the mother's inability to supply an excess of milk. The mother may, and usually does, lament this fact, the child does not. On the contrary it grows at a normal rate.

    

    

CHAPTER IX
MOTHER'S MILK

    Human milk is secreted for the use of the human infant and under normal conditions, in healthy mothers, will be secreted in sufficient quantity, and proper quality and over a sufficiently long period of time, to supply the entire milk-needs of the infant.

    The secretion of the breasts during the first few days after birth is somewhat different to ordinary milk and is called colostrsum. It is scanty in amount, thicker than milk and of a deep lemon-yellow color. Its chemical composition differs greatly from that of the later secretion. It is supposed to have a laxative effect upon the child.

    Colostrum changes gradually into true milk which is thinner and bluer. The flow of milk is usually well established by the end of the first week while the complete change is finished by the end of the second or third week.

    As the child grows the secretion of milk gradually increases in response to his demands. Much of the milk is actually formed while the baby nurses and is secreted in proportion to the vigor, strength and persistence with which he sucks.

    The complete emptying of the breast each time he nurses is the most effective means of increasing the production of milk. If the breasts are not emptied each time, the secretion of milk gradually decreases. Farmers and dairymen have known this fact, with relation to cows, for ages. Some women like cows, give more milk than others, but aside from this the amount of milk secreted depends very largely upon the demands of the baby-- Increasing when more is consumed and decreasing when less is taken.

    Human milk resembles cow's milk but differs from it in several important particulars. It is much sweeter than cow's milk, has no odor, and varies in color from a bluish white to a rich, creamy yellow. However one cannot judge of the quality of milk from its appearance, for the yellowest milks owe their color to a substance called carotin which is found in certain vegetables used for food.

    The composition of human milk is very much the same throughout the whole of the nursing period. The greatest variation is in its protein content which diminishes as time passes. However, the composition of the milk varies from day to day and even from one feeding to the next, as well as from the beginning to the end of each nursing.

    Human milk, on an average, contains about 7 per cent milk sugar, 3 to 4 per cent fat, 1.50 per cent protein, and 0.20 per cent of salts. The percentage of whey or soluble proteins in human milk is much greater than in cow's milk. Its salts are in a form much more easily utilized by the baby than are those of cow's milk. There is sufficient of these salts for the baby's needs except that of iron. But since the child is born with a good supply of iron stored in the liver, it does not suffer, at least for many months, due to this deficiency. This is, indeed, a remarkable instance of the precise adaptation of the milk to the needs of the child.

    Analyses of mother's milk to determine its quality are of no practical value unless the whole of several nursings are used. Samples taken in the evening are likely to be different from those taken in the morning. At the beginning of the nursing the fat in the milk varies from 2 to 3 per cent, at the end of the nursing it varies from 6 to 10 per cent.

    Considerable variation in the composition of the milk of various women is found. But babies thrive well on all of these. A baby that was thriving well on its mother's milk will thrive equally as well on the milk of a wet nurse. It is also true that one baby may thrive well on milk which, for some reason, another baby failed on. A baby may even take the milk of several wet-nurses and thrive well on all of them.

    There can be no absolute standard for good milk. Unless some extreme variation exists, chemical analysis of the milk cannot determine its fitness or unfitness for the baby. Most of this laboratory monkey-work is just part of commercial medicine.

    There is only one test for the adequacy or inadequacy of milk and this is the feeding test. If a child is growing normally and thriving on the breast milk it is receiving, it is quite evident that the supply is adequate But if it is not growing it is possible that the supply of milk is insufficient.

    The amount of milk the baby receives may be determined by weighing it before and after nursing. Usually the baby receives one-half of its meal during the first five minutes of sucking. During the second five minutes it gets an added quarter of its meal.

    There are only two ways of increasing the supply of milk--namely, an improved diet, and the complete emptying of the breasts at each nursing.

    Water drinking will not help. There are no drugs to be taken internally or applied locally and no patented foods that will stimulate milk production.

    Eating large quantities of rich foods is useless. These only derange digestion and destroy the mother's appetite. The one class of foods that greatly increases milk production in animals, and there are reasons for believing they will do so in woman, are green foods. An abundance of these should be eaten.

    Prof. McCollum says: "There is good reason to believe that the common practice of confining the diet to too great an extent to bread, meat, sugar, potatoes, beans, peas and breakfast cereals (before birth and during the nursing period) is in no small measure responsible for the failure of many mothers to produce milk of satisfactory quantity and quality for the nutrition of their infants. There is no great hardship (but great benefit) in the restriction of the intake of meats, etc., and the increase of milk, fruits and green vegetables, and the mother who does so will greatly minimize the danger of a break In the healthy growth of her baby."

    Dr. Page says:- "The woman who lacks a reliable appetite for any sort of plain wholesome food, is not a well woman; if she indulges in that which is unwholesome, she cannot maintain good health; if she is overfed, abnormally fat and plethoric, she is a sick woman; and such mothers cannot supply a perfect food for the nursing child." "Much sloppy food, hot drinks, profuse drinking between meals 'to force the milk,' are injurious to both mother and child. Much animal food is not advisable either in winter or summer, and in the latter season especially should be avoided altogether." "Nausea, lack of appetite, fitful appetite, 'gnawing' at the stomach--the latter so generally mistaken for a demand for food--all result from excess or the use of unwholesome food or condiments."

    In treating of the causes of rickets, Dr. Eric Pitchard, of England, notes that the diet of the English is deficient in the alkaline minerals and contains an excess of acid radicals. Commenting on the effects of this upon nursing he says: "It is also worthy of note that, concurrent with the deterioration of teeth in this country (England) there is to be observed a decreasing ability on the part of mothers to suckle their infants. The production of milk entails an extraordinary drain on the calcium resources of the body; when these resources are depleted, the inability to produce milk is a natural sequence."

    Fruits and green foods are our richest and best sources of alkaline bases and should do for the human mother, in the matter of milk production, what they do for other mothers.

    Speaking of the long period (two to three full years) over which the Chinese mother nurses her child, Prof. H. C. Sherman says:

    "It is not improbable that the free use of green vegetables with their high calcium and vitamin content in the food of the mother may be a factor in her ability to nurse her children through such a long period.

    "This must be true because McCollum has found that the vitamins of milk are not manufactured by the cow, but are taken directly by the cow from her food."

    Fruits and fresh raw green vegetables should form the bulk of the diet of the mother during both gestation and lactation.

    Mothers are often advised to drink beer, wine, ale, cocoa, chocolate and malted drinks, to increase and improve their milk supply. This advice is pernicious in the extreme. "It is a question," says: Dr. Wm. J. Robinson. "if a mother partaking of considerable quantities of alcoholic beverages may not transmit the taste for alcohol to her children."

    Aside from this the mother's diet should consist of the usual natural foods. Nursing is not a disease and does not require special diets. She should, however, especially avoid habits of eating which derange her digestion.

    An excess of protein in her diet may result in an excess of protein in her milk and this is likely to cause trouble in the child. That this is true is well attested by observations upon human beings In animals it has been well tested in the laboratory.

    Hartwell, one scientific investigator, found that an excess of protein in the mother's diet during lactation is detrimental to the well-being of her young. L. T. Anderegg, of the Laboratory of Physiological Chemistry, Iowa State College, says:

    "Evidence obtained in this laboratory shows that it is a matter of considerable importance that the ratio of fat to protein be within certain limits if optimum results are expected. If the proportion of fat to protein is too high, growth may be normal in the first generation, but the animals produce few or no young. Evans and Bishop and Mathill and Stone employed diets in which the ratio of fats to protein was too high for best results, and as a consequence few or no young were produced.

    "Hartwell showed that the young were not reared when the mothers were given high protein diets at the time of lactation. The young went into spasms and examination of the alimentary tracts showed the cessation of the flow of milk. It has been observed repeatedly in this laboratory also that diets high in protein and comparatively low in fat are detrimental to the rearing of the young."

    Nervousness or lack of exercise may also result in too much protein in the milk.

    The percentage of sugar in milk cannot be increased or decreased by any means. The amount of fat cannot be increased except in mothers who are much underfed. It may be reduced, however, by cutting down the whole amount of the mother's food. There is probably great variation in the amount of sales in milk produced by diet, while it seems certain that its vitamin content must vary greatly.

    IF THE BREASTS ARE NOT THOROUGHLY EMPTIED AT EACH NURSING, THE SUPPLY OF MILK WILL QUICKLY DIMINISH.

    EMPTYING THE BREASTS AT EACH NURSING WILL INCREASE THE QUANTITY OF MILK MORE CERTAINLY THAN ANYTHING ELSE.

    Much inability to nurse the baby is sheer unwillingness to do so. Many mothers can find the greatest number of flimsy excuses for not nursing their children. Much inability to nurse the baby is due to carelessness, neglect or to ignorance. I have tried to emphasize the necessity for the complete emptying of the breast each time the baby nurses. Too many mothers allow their babies to nurse one breast for a few minutes and then give it the other breast. Neither breast is ever fully emptied and they both rapidly dry up. The child should be given one breast at one feeding and the other breast at the next feeding. See that it. completely empties each breast before giving it the other breasts if one breast does not supply enough milk for the feeding. It is a terrible thing for a mother to fall down on the duty of nursing her baby. Cow's milk, despite all the virtues attributed to it s a terrible food for child as well as adult.

    That undernourished mothers cannot nurse their babies is proven by the results of fasting, by the experience of mothers in certain parts of war-ravished Europe, by animal experiment and by examples existing all around us. A fast quickly reduces the quantity of milk and impairs its quality. Experiments have shown that after 14 days of fasting the amount of milk secreted is only about one-seventh the normal amount. The milk becomes poorer in water, protein, sugar and mineral salts. The fat content remains practically unchanged. Lusk found that in fasting goats, the fat content increased. Others have found the fat content of milk to remain practically the same in cow's milk, although the. other elements all decreased.

    Kauppe, in Germany, examined the milk of a number of nursing mothers during the war, and found the fat content practically normal. He resorted to a fanciful interpretation of psychical influences as an explanation for the failure of infants to thrive on their milk. In Central Europe the half-famished mothers during the war were unable to nurse their children. How ridiculous to call in "psychic influences" to account for what was so evidently due to partial starvation.

    Grief, worry, anger, fear, great excitement, rage, etc., may greatly diminish or completely suspend the secretion of milk; or, these may so alter the composition of the milk that the baby will be made ill. I often wonder if some women don't fail to nurse their children due solely to their fear that they cannot and to their worrying that they cannot. Nervous and excitable women are liable to have too much protein in their milk, and this will derange the baby's digestion.

    It is recorded that angry mothers have killed their children by nursing them. Worry and anger may so derange the milk as to cause convulsions in the baby. Any influence thee depresses, or excites, or over- stimulates the mother, will ruin her milk and nake her baby sick.

    Many drugs taken by the mother are excreted in the milk. Alcohol, opium, atropin, iodid of potash, salicylate of soda, the bromide, aspirin, urotripin, and antipyrin are among chose drugs which find their way into the mother's milk. Cathartics and laxatives taken by the mother are apt to produce colic and loose movements in the baby.

    Mothers should be careful not to take drugs and poison their babies. We are told by medical men thee these drugs never occur in the milk in sufficient quantities to do harm to the baby, but this must be viewed as merely a defense of their drugging practice. Anyway, they never recognize the harm from a drug unless the drug nearly kills you.

    

    
CHAPTER X
SHOULD BABY BE WEANED

    Elsewhere I have pointed out the advantages of breast-feeding over unnatural feeding. That the natural food of a baby is its own mother's milk is so obvious it hardly needs emphasis. It is, then, certainly the duty of the woman who brings a baby into the world to do the best she possibly can in caring for it. Breast milk being the ideal food for the infant, it is certainly her duty to promote a sufficient supply of good milk for her child.

    A woman whose maternal instincts have been lost or have failed to develop, and who has not attained a degree of moral and ethical responsibility, which compels her to protect her child, should not become a mother. If she does not feel the responsibility for giving her child the best antenatal and post-natal care she should not bear children. Men who are lacking in a sense of responsibility, in aiding their wives in the proper care of their children, should refrain from becoming fathers. They are better off single.

    Mothers who turn their babies over to the tender mercies of a nurse or a day nursery while they go to business, and deny their children the benefits of their breast milk, are not deserving of children. There are cases where the mother is the support of the family and in such cases she cannot avoid this, no matter how much she desires to do so, but there are probably many more of the other kind. Mothers who deny their breast milk to their babies and who dry up their breasts so that they can shine in social functions or be forever "on the go," or because of the mistaken notion that nursing will ruin their figures (as though the figures of their children are not of more importance than their own caricatures of the human form), are fiends. If a woman is unwilling to sacrifice her parties, swimming, club work, drinking, and chocolate and indolence, for the sake of the health and normal development of her child she is morally and biologically unfit for motherhood. She should avoid it.

    No woman of sound mind and normal instincts would ever think of refusing to nurse her child if she fully realized how much more likely it is to live and develop normally and how much less likely it is to be sick and die, when it is breast fed than when it is bottle-fed.

    Nursing a child benefits the mother, as well as the child. Mothers who cannot or who will not nurse their children are deprived of these benefits. There is, first, an improvement in the nutrition of her own body. Second, nursing the baby assists in involution of the uterus. The uterus of a nursing mother returns more quickly and more perfectly to its normal prepregnancy condition, than does the uterus of a woman who does not nurse her child. It is claimed that the reciprocal affection between mother and child is greater, if she nurses her child, than between babies and mothers where the mother does not nurse her child. This is not a far-fetched claim and is quite likely true. I put no credence in the claim that the nursing mother transmits, through her milk, traits to her child which the non-nursing mother does not. Not only is proof of this entirely lacking but I can find no grounds upon which to base such a belief.

    Too many women are looking for an excuse to give up nursing their children and there are too many physicians who encourage them in this. They give up nursing their children on insufficient grounds, because they do not want to nurse them. They wean their babies too early because they do not want to go on nursing them to the normal limit of the nursing period. In this they are encouraged by doctors and manufacturers of patented baby foods who tell them that their milk is not good for the baby after a certain period. The manufacturers of "Dr. Moffett's Teethina" advise:

    "Baby should be weaned for its own sake as well as for it's mothers sake at about ten months. By this time the child should have become accustomed to artificial feeding from the bottle, gradually introduced as the breast is gradually withheld so as to avoid a too sudden change."

    This is pernicious advice and is followed by the equally pernicious advice to "try some of the prepared foods," "if the first substitute food does not agree with the child," and lastly, "where certified milk cannot be had, give the baby some one of the standard makes of condensed milk or baby foods." The advice to take an infant off the wholesome milk of its mother and put it on such stuff is criminal, and any mother who follows such advice, after learning the truth, deserves to lose her baby.

    Women often give up the effort to nurse their babies because there is no milk, when, if they will persist for a few days. the milk would be forthcoming. The supply may be small at first and will later increase in amount.

    Other women are unwilling to bear the discomforts of cracked nipples for a brief spell. Doctors and others frequently tell them that it will make the child ill if, where the mother does not have enough milk for the childs needs, she feeds it both from the breast and from the bottle. The information is both false and pernicious. The baby will fare all the better for receiving the mother's milk. Babies should have the advantage of their mother's. milk in addition to the other foods used, as long as possible.

    There are many women who make up their minds that they cannot nurse their baby long anyway, so they give up at once. Such a thing cannot be too strongly condemned. A mother's milk is of more importance to her child during the first few weeks of its life than subsequently.

    It sometimes happens that a woman could not nurse a prior baby and she gives up the duty of nursing the present one, because she thinks she can not do it. Inability to nurse one's first baby, for instance, does not mean she cannot nurse subsequent ones.

    Some women imagine themselves to be too nervous or too delicate to nurse their children. But many of these "too nervous" women have good milk while many delicate women will find their health improved while nursing. "Delicate" and "nervous" women owe it to their children to at lease make an honest effort to nurse them.

    Small breasts do not constitute a reason for not nursing one's child. There is no necessary relation between the size of the breast and the ability to nurse one's child. It is a fact that many women with small breasts secrete more and better milk than women with large breasts. The normal breast is not a large pendulous bag, anyway. There are of course, women who have no breasts. The glands never develop and their chests are adorned with nothing more than the nipples. Such women, if it is possible for them to become mothers, should avoid motherhood.

    The resumption of menstruation is, due to the persistence of ancient superstitions about this function, often considered a cause for weaning. It is estimated that almost half of all nursing mothers begin to menstruate again as early as the third month after birth. Children should not be weaned because of this. They do not suffer because of the menstruation.

    A slight and brief illness should not cause the mother to wean her child or to with-hold her baby from the breast. Only serious illness should cause her to wean her baby.

    Pregnancy need not result in the immediate weaning of the child. Although, this is usually advised, on the grounds that it is too much of a drain upon the mother to nourish two lives besides her own, and her breast milk is likely to become too poor and scanty to nourish the baby properly. I am sure this objection to nursing during pregnancy is valid only if the mother is eating the denatured slops advised by those who make the objection. Most of the drains blamed on pregnancy and lactation are due to a denatured diet and lack of hygiene.

    There are a few conditions which demand the weaning of the child. Dr. Tilden says:-- "Convulsions in nursing children, not traceable to objective causes, will usually be found to come from slight septic infections of the mothers, due to injuries incident to child birth; hence it is well to carefully investigate all unaccountable sicknesses occurring in young children soon after birth, with a view of locating the trouble in a blood derangement of the mother and discovering, if possible, whether it comes from septic poisoning.

    Again he says:-- "Many, if not all, children born under conventional circumstances, are more or less encumbered with flesh; instead of weighing 5 or 6 pounds, they weigh from 10 to 12 pounds and because of this overweight mothers have long, tedious, and painful labors, and too frequently are forced into instrumental deliveries. As a sequel these mothers suffer greatly from bruises, contusions and lascerations. It matters not how careful the physician who officiates at such confinements is to be scrupulously clean, these women usually have enough septic infection to cause their milk to be unwholesome, and even if they escape having a slight septic infection the severe labor breaks down so much tissue that the blood is deranged and the secretions, including the milk, are impaired to such an extent that before the doctor and the nurse are suspicious that anything is wrong the baby is very sick. This necessitates taking the child from the mother's breast, which is equivalent to weaning it, for the mothers are usually as much encumbered with flesh as the children, and because of this encumbrance, plus the blood impairment described above, they cannot be restored to health until long after they have lost their milk."

    Many women who have prolonged and painful and even instrumental deliveries are able to nurse their children well, however.

    Women with tuberculosis should not even try to nurse their children. Of course, such women have no business having children, in the first place.

    Any acute or chronic disease which deranges the mother's milk should cause her to wean the child. Insanity and epilepsy are usually listed as reasons for not nursing one's baby, but I think these are even better reasons for not having children. So-called syphilis is not a reason for weaning the child.

    Babies with lip deformities and premature babies that are too weak to nurse are best fed their mothers milk after this has been expressed from her breasts. The milk should be forced from the breast by the use of the hands. The breasts should not be massaged in this operation.

    The breast pump is not advisable. It injures the tissues and invariably causes the breasts to dry up prematurely. Dr. Tilden says of this:

    "I found that when the pump was used the breasts were more or less bruised and that the bruising caused inflammation and suppuration. In time I proved to myself that there were more abcesses following the use of the pump than when it was not used."

    

    
CHAPTER XI.
THREE YEAR NURSING PERIOD

    A few years ago, upon insufficient data, I conceived the notion thee every human infant should nurse from three to five full years, the time depending upon whether or not the child was born in the tropics or in the far north. My theory was simply that milk should constitute all or a large part of the child's diet until it has reached a definite stage in its physical development. I believe, also, that this period, during which the child or the animal should normally take milk, bears a definite relation to the length of time the animal requires to complete its physical development. Someday the ratio between the normal nursing period and the period of physical development will be worked out.

    When this theory presented itself to my attention I began to search for evidence of it and also to find whether or not anyone else had ever presented this theory. I found Alfred McCann declaring (Physical Culture, March, 1919); "It is sufficient to declare, as a law, supported by incontrovertable evidence, that every child until its twelfth year, should receive on the average one quart of milk every day."

    This, of course, I knew to be bunk. There is no such law. On the contrary, I declare it to be a law, supported by incontrovertable evidence, that every child will be weaned and its natural milk supply cut off long before its twelfth year. I have seen so many cases where children after the age of three or four years, have persistently refused all milk that I have become convinced that were the diet of the child otherwise all that it should be, every child would instinctively turn from milk at about this age. McCann, of course, is a laboratory man, pure and simple. He is a food chemist, but not a dietitian; nor is he a close student of nature.

    Milo Hasting declared in an article in Physical Culture (The Extravagance of Meat), a few years before, that, "The natural period for nursing the human infant is three to four years. And as the mother rarely conceives during the nursing period she would under such circumstances only bear five or six children in her lifetime. Civilization shortened the nursing period with the aid of the cow and has now in many instances eliminated it altogether. Two results followed this change. First, our utter dependence upon the cow; second, the absolute need of birth control to prevent too frequent child bearing. Someday under a perfectly rational civilization the longer period of nursing the human infant may return, but there is little chance for it in our time and hence the cow is a necessity for the nutrition of our children."

    Dr. Page said:-- "In the absence of particular circumstances compelling premature weaning, I believe that the Mother's milk, providing the mother be in fair health, and the babe evidently thriving on her milk, is the best food for the infant during the first eighteen months, and even until the end of the second year."

    Thus I found that my idea was not new, but neither of these men offered any evidence to support their views. Dr. Page offered his view as a belief, while Mr. Hastings presented his just as though it is generally known that the longer nursing period is the natural one. There are a few students who know that the three to four or five year nursing period is the normal period for the human infant, but the layman and most, if not all physicians are ignorant of this face. Dr. Felix Oswald (Physical Education, Page 29), had declared that "the appearance of the eye-teeth (cuspids) and lesser molars marks the end of the second year as the period when healthy children may be gradually accustomed to semi-fluid vegetable substance. Till then, milk should form their only sustenance. But mothers whose employment does not interfere with their inclination in this respect may safely nurse their children for a much longer period."

    In support of this he says:--"The wives of the sturdy Argyll peasants rarely wean a bairn before its claim is disputed by the next youngster and the stoutest urchin of five years I ever saw was the son of a Cervian widow, who still took him to her breast like a baby."

    So far as I can learn from my researches, the long nursing period, three to five years, is universal among those people who have not learned to substitute the mother with a cow or a goat. A few examples will suffice.

    A patient of mine, a native of Macedonia, informs me that in his country mothers nurse their babies two to three years and even longer. A cousin of his was nursed for six full years. I may add that since I started my investigations I have met three American women who nursed their children for more than two years. A Hebrew patient, who was born and reared in Turkey, tells me that Turkish women nurse their children two years and longer.

    Prof. Sherman, of Columbia University, says: "In China nursing is continued for two full years and not rarely for three full years. The child thus has ample time to become adjusted to the consumption of a variety of vegetable foods before its maternal milk supply is entirely cut off."

    Westermark calls us (History of Human Marriage); "Very commonly, in a state of savage and barbarous life, the husband must not cohabit with his wife till the child is weaned. And this prohibition is all the more severe, as the suckling-time generally lasts for two, three, four years, or even more."

    He mentions a number of such people and attributes the long suckling time, not to the natural needs of the child, which nature has provided for, in the same manner that she has provided for a supply of milk from the maternal breast, for as long as needed in the case of the lower animals, but "chiefly to the want of soft food and animal milk."

    However, Westermark points out that this is not always the case saying: "But when the milk can be obtained, and even when the people have domesticated animals able to supply them with it, this kind of food is often avoided." He gives, as an example, "the Chinese who "entirely eschew the use of milk."

    The Macedonian, previously referred to, assures me that, athough his native people have and use goat's and sheep's milk, they would never think of feeding it to an infant, providing the mother could nurse it, or of voluntarily cutting short the nursing period because these milks could be substituted for the mother's milk.

    Wm. J. Robinson, M. D., in Woman: Her Sex and Love Life, tells us that in Egypt and other Oriental countries "it is no rare sight to see a child three or four years old interrupting his work or his play and running up to suckle his mother's breast." I have seen two year old children suckling their mother's breasts in this country. Dr. Robinson attributes the long nursing period among Orientals to the desire to prevent conception. This assumpeion has no biological basis.

    Catlin says:--"It is a very rare occurrence for an Indian woman to be 'blessed' with more than four or five children during her life; and, generally speaking, they seem to be contented with two or three." Westermark tells us that "this statement is confirmed by the evidence of several other authorities; and it holds good not only for the North American Indians, but, upon thc whole, for a great many uncivilized peoples."

    Catlin also says, in combatting the charge, made by some half-informed people, that there was an enormous infant mortality mong the Indians, "Amongst the North American Indians, at all events, where two or three children are generally the utmost results of a marriage, such a rate of mortality could not exist without soon depopulating the country."

    Replying to the charge made by some that the "slight degree of prolificness" observed among the North American Indians, and some other savage tribes, was due to "hard labour, or to unfavorable conditions of life in general," Westermark says:-- "That it is partly due to the long period of suckling is highly probable, not only because a woman less easily becomes pregnant during the time of lactation, but also on account of the continence in which she often has to live during that period."

    I hold, then, that the normal or natural suckling-period of the human infant is from three to five years; that the healthy, well fed woman can nurse her child for this period without harm to herself or child; and that, during this period, her own milk, if normal, is better for her child than that of any cow, gone, mare, camel, sheep, ass, or other milk animal used by man. I hold that it is the duty of every healthy mother to nurse her child during the whole of this period and that for her to lay down on the job is to rob her child of its birth right.

    I do not mean that the child should exist exclusively upon milk during this whole period. It, like the sucklings of other animals, should gradually include more of other foods in its diet as the maternal supply diminishes.

    

    
CHAPTER XII
COW'S MILK

    The food essential to healthy development and growth of every infant mammal, including human infants, is produced for it in its own mother's breasts. The milk of each species differs widely from that of every other, as we shall show later, and each is especially fitted to meet the needs of the young of that species. The infant continues, for some time after birth to feed upon the substance of its mother.

    We are prone to take it for granted that man began to feed cow's milk or the milk of other animals to babies shortly after Adam and Eve were kicked out of the Garden of Delight and that he has continued to do so ever since. We may even imagine that the practice is universal. We could hardly make a worse mistake.

    We know for instance, that few Chinese and Hindoo mother's have cow's milk or the milk of other animals for their babies. We know that the North and South American Indians had no milk animals and their children received no milk after they were weaned from the mother's breasts. In many other parts of the world the same fact holds good.

    So far as the record of history can show us, a man by the name of Underwood is the first to have risked the experiment of feeding cow's milk to infants. This was in the year 1793--only 137 years ago. This was before the invention of the rubber nipple and we may well imagine what a fine time he had feeding this calf-food to a human infant.

    Prior to that memorable date--1793--if a mother died and left her child to be nursed, it had to be done by another woman--a wet-nurse--and not by the cow. Since then, the cow has not only become the foster mother of the American and most of the European portions of the human race, but we have developed the absurd notion that "a baby is never to be weaned." It must have milk, not merely through the period of infancy, as nature designed, but also throughout childhood, adolescence and adult life as well.

    Milk is loudly proclaimed the one and only "perfect food" and from every direction we are urged to drink milk. It is the "perfect food" for the infant, the child, the athelete, the office worker, the invalid and for everyone. There is a strong commercial influence back of all this hue and cry about the magic virtues of milk, however. We need not take too seriously the mouthings of chose who are actuated by the profit motive.

    Milk (cow's milk) is not the perfect food for either infant or adult. But we have so endowed it with super-potentiality that we even insist on nursing mothers also nursing. A quart a day, and even more, is sometimes prescribed for the nursing mother. This slavish adherence to milk has been brought about as the result of a frame-up between the doctors and the dairymen, of which, the following deem taken from the Ice Cream Field, (National Journal), of July, 1927, and entitled Dairy Council Plans Educational Work," is only partial evidence:

    "Latest developments in the health education and increasing the use of dairy products in the nation's diet were discussed at the sixth annual summer conference of national and regional dairy councils at Buffalo, N. Y., June 11 to 13. Speakers at the conference included M. D. Munn, President; Dr. Charles H. Keene, professor of hygiene, University of Buffalo; Miss Mary E. Spencer, health education specialist, Washington, D. C.; Dr. W. W. Peter, associate secretary, American Public Health Association; Dr. H. E. Van Norman, president Dry Milk Institute; Clifford Goldsmith, writer and lecturer; Miss Sally Lucas Joan, health consultant, and officers and trained specialists of thc council organization.

    "Many new posters, leaflets, exhibits, moving pictures, health stories, plays and other educational means of presenting the Dairy Council story of the importance of the 'protective foods' in the diet were presented and discussed during the conference. An analysis of the type of work being done by the council organization and how it helps the dairy industry was presented by W. P. B. Lockwood, New England Dairy and Food Council, Boston, Mass. Business sessions of the officers and women workers, as well as a special session on publicity methods, completed the conference program.

    " 'The Dairy Council is reaching the point now,' stated Dr. C. W. Larson, director, 'where its corps of trained workers must devote most of their time to the preparation of interesting and instructive projects and material which can be supplied to schools and colleges, health and welfare organizations and similar groups to be presented by them in their own localities throughout the United Seates. Formerly, most of our time was spent in schod work. Now, that is only one phase of the enlarged activities of the Dairy Council.'"

    This is a cold-blooded business affair which raises the cry of health as a means of increasing the profits of thc dairying industries and the doctors that are associated with these industries, and which unblushingly labels their propaganda, education.

    Milk is not an "adult food" but is a temporary exepediency in the life of the young animal, lasting it until the time that it evolves teeth for independent mastication and is able to secrete digestive juices of a quaky and character to enable it to digest the foods it will naturally live on for the remainder of its life.

    Cow's milk is not only not a perfect food for the human adult; it is not the best food for the human infant. It is not even the best milk from the lower animals for infants. If doctors and dairymen are really interested in the health of children, they should see to it that goats milk, which is far superior to cow's milk for infants, is available for them. Instead of talking about the importance of "protective foods" in the diet, they should devote their "educational (sic) campaign" to telling people of the dangers of the denatured foods. That their campaign is merely an effort to sell more milk and not an effort to tell the people the truth about their present denatured diet gives the whole show away.

    It is wholly unnatural for cows to give the large quantities of milk, rich in fat, as our dairy cows do. By selective breeding and forced feeding, they are induced to give large quantities of milk and to produce this far beyond the normal nursing period for calves. Indeed many of these cows are never dry, but continue to produce milk, that is sold in the market, from one calf to the next, year after year. I have seen cows milked for ten or more years, without once being dry, and having a calf a year during this time.

    This constitutes a drain on the cows which makes it impossible for one of them to be healthy. They are especially prone to tuberculosis and have their lives greatly shortened. While almost all dairy cattle are tubercular, this disease is extremely rare among the range cattle of the plains.

    Added to the evils of excessive milk producing, is the evil of over feeding on a one sided and high protein diet. This tends to produce disease in the cow and to greatly impair her milk also. An excess of protein is particularly bad for infants. If an excess of protein in the mother's diet impairs her milk for her baby, then certainly an excess of protein in the diet of the cow, whose milk already contains far more protein than that of a woman, is bad for the child.

    An excess of fat is also bad for the infant. Our dairy herds have been so bred and they are so fed that their milk contains a great excess of fat.

    Dairymen and farmers produce milk to sell and the more milk and butter-fat a cow produces the more profits there is in it for them. Farmers and dairymen are not different to owners of coal mines or cotton mills--they are interested only in increasing their profits. They will produce only that kind of milk and those quantities of milk that brings in the most money for them, regardless of its evil effects upon the users of the milk.

    Cows from which certified milk is produced are kept through out the year in sunless barns, are allowed a very limited amount of exercise and are fed chiefly on dry food, being allowed little or no fresh green fodder. This sickens the cow and assures the deterioration of her milk. Cows need green grass, exercise, fresh air and sunshine. Dr. Hess, of Columbia University, showed that milk from cows fed on pastures in the sunlight maintains the health and growth of animals, whereas milk from cows maintained out of the sun and fed on dry fodder will not.

    Dairy cows and particularly "certified" herds, are now all tuberculin tested--that is, poisoned and sickened. The tuberculin test is a fraud. It is not a reliable test for tuberculosis, as every doctor well knows. Give it to animals in large doses and they "promptly die with symptoms of an intense intoxication;" in "moderate doses," "the animals display the symptom; of a profound intoxication, but gradually recover, with a mild and chronic form of disease."

    Tuberculin is the putrescent resultant of decomposing beef broth containing glycerine and is preserved with carbolic acid. It is not merely a poison, it is a whole array of poisons.

    Pasteurizing milk leads to carelessness and assures us dirty milk. This will be more fully discussed in the next chapter.

    Milk also undergoes deterioration after it is milked and allowed to stand. Its food value is markedly impaired by being frozen.

    Present methods of producing and handling milk make it next to impossible to procure good milk in the markets. These present methods are largely the results of the work of physicians who urge us to use more milk. Do not censure me too strongly, then, when I declare that the medical profession is determined that there shall not be a healthy child in America and that no child shall be permitted to have good food.

    The word "protein" is a very indefinite term and it is known that the same amount of protein and calories from different sources may have very different food values. Cow's milk possesses a different and inferior protein to that found in mother's milk and, while well suited to the needs of the calf, is poorly fitted to the nourishment of the infant.

    Cow's milk forms a large, hard, tough curd that is hard for the infant to digest. Human milk forms small, soft flocculent masses which are easy of digestion.

    These differing physical and chemical characteristics of the milk of the two mothers are designed to meet the different requirements of the young of the two species and the two milks are not, therefore, interchangeable. It follows, logically, that the cow is not the best mother of the human infant and when she adopted our children, she did them an injury.

    

    

CHAPTER XIII
PASTEURIZATI0N

    "By milk I mean safe milk," says Alfred W. McCann, "and, the only scientific way of insuring safety is by the process of pasteurizing."

    McCann knows that safe milk depends upon: (1) a healthy cow, (2) proper food, sunshine, fresh air and exercise for the cow, (3) clean handling. He knows that healthy dairy cows are extremely rare; that no dairy cow is properly nourished; that their food is always denatured and unbalanced; and that milk is not always handled in a way to keep it clean. What then does he mean by calling pasteurized milk, "safe." He means this:

    If the cow is sick pasteurize the milk and use it.

    If the milk is deficient, due to a deficient diet or to lack of sunshine, pasturize it and use it.

    If the milk is dirty, paseturize it and use it.

    The false sense of security that the process of pasteurization gives people, who use such milk, is only one of the evils of this process. It puts a premium upon carelessness and uncleanness in the handling of milk.

    In the process of pasteurizing, milk is heated to 145 degrees F., and maintained at this temperature for a half hour, or longer. This produces some very important changes in the milk itself, none of which are beneficial. The process is intended to destroy bacteria which are supposed to cause disease. It does destroy
some of the germs in milk, including the lactic acid bacilli, which are the natural protectors of the milk. The destruction of these lactic acid bacteria allows the milk to rot--it will not sour.

    The Welch's Bacillus and various putrefaction germs are present in pasteurized milk and, due to the absence of the protective lactic acid germs, these set up putrefaction in the milk, which then becomes poisonous. Diarrhea is perhaps only the least of troubles resulting from such poisoning.

    Many bacteria or their spores are not killed, even by boiling. I put no stock in the germ theory, but it was this theory that started this pasteurizing monkey-work, and I want to show its folly, even from this angle. Dr. Chas. Sanford Porter, who is considered an authority on milk, declares that pasteurization destroys the lactic-acid forming bacteria and that "these bacteria are not dangerous to health, and the methods of restraining or destroying them are without effect on the bacteria of consumption, typhoid, or other fevers that might contaminate milk in certain places."

    Dr. Kellogg declares that:-- "Present methods of controlling the milk supply are by no means entirely satisfactory. This is especially true as regards the bacteriological examination of the milk. At the present time this examination usually extends no further than the determination of the total number of bacteria present except when a special research is undertaken. The number of bacteria present is no criteria whatever of the character of the milk as regards safety to life and health. In general the greater number of bacteria present are ordinary sour milk germs which are entirely harmless."

    So much for that; let us come now to the changes in the milk itself. These are the serious effects of pasteurization. If pasteurization only killed a few harmless germs nobody could offer any objection to it.

    There is a great and physiologically important reduction of the bone-nourishing salts of the milk. calacim-magnesium carbonophosphate is broken up into its constituent salts and at least three of these--calcium phosphate, magnesium phosphate and calcium carbonate--are practically insoluble and their usefulness almost destroyed.

    There is a partial coagulation of the milk protein, the coagulated portion being precipitated with the salt, and the milk albumen being practically destroyed as food. This destruction of the protein and disturbance of the mineral balance of the milk destroys much of its food value. That food quality to which the term vitamin C has been given, is also destroyed by pasteurization. The sugars are broken down and to some extent the colloids are agglutinated. The original structure of the milk is broken down and there is a slightly reduced cream line. The chemistry and physical structure of the milk are altered. its growth-promoting and life-sustaining qualities are greatly impared. It is more unfit as food than raw milk.

    Its digestibility is markedly impaired. It produces constipation and if fed exclusively, scurvy, rickets, scrufulosis and kindred diseases, if fed continuously. Dogs fed pasteurized milk develop mange and other disorders. The same litter, fed on raw milk thrive. Pasteurized milk is simply not capable of sustaining life, health and growth for very long.

    McCann says:-- "In early infancy, during an exclusive milk diet, a few teaspoonsful of sweet orange juice strained through a clean linen cloth, will offset any so-called disadvantages that here and there the enemies of pasteurized milk have charged against it."

    This is ridiculous, although it is the attitude of Sherman, McCullom, Howe, and most other experimenters who recognize the impairing work of pasteurization--and these "so-called disadvantages" are not merely charged against pasteurized milk by its enemies; they are admitted by its friends.

    A few tespoonsful of orange juice, or tomato juice, or lemon juice will not and cannot replace the destroyed and impaired substances in pasteurized milk. Dr. Howe says: "If milk is to come from unknown sources, I prefer to have it pasteurized, because I can compensate for the loss of vitamin C by taking enough orange juice." But there is more loss to milk through pasteurization than the mere loss of this hypothetical vitamin and orange juice and tomato juice cannot entirely take the place of the qualities lost. The whole theory of denaturing some of our foods and "offsetting" these with foods that have not been denatured is false and ridiculous, whether we are dealing with milk or with white flour.

    Assuming that orange juice, lemon juice, or tomato juice will prevent the development of scurvy in infants fed on pasteurized milk; this is not enough. We don't want our infants merely to escape recognizable scurvy. We want the maximum of health and development. A child may present no recognizable signs of deficiency, may appear normal, and still not have the high standard of vigorous positive health that is always desirable.

    Dirty milk is almost assured by pasteurization. The false sense of security created by faith in the protective power of the process discourages rigid cleanliness and promotes carelessness in handling on the part of the producer and all concerned. A high standard of cleanliness is not demanded by the friends of pasteurization. Milk produced under all kinds of conditions, even though pasteurized afterward, is not as desirable as raw milk produced under sanitary conditions. Pasteurization does not make unclean milk clean.

    In many instances there is nothing wrong with babies except that they are being starved by being fed pasteurized milk. Babies do not thrive, or cease to thrive on heated milk. The same babies do well when changed to raw milk.

    The London Lancet reported, a few years ago, some experiments by an English physician who fed a number of kittens and puppies on pasteurized milk. They died . Kittens and puppies fed on raw milk thrived well.

    The very best of cow's milk is poor enough as infant food, without making it still worse by pasteurization. The best of cow's milk can be obtained only from healthy, range-fed cows, which get plenty of green foods, an abundance of sunshine and fresh air, and are not tuberculin tested (poisoned) and are not stuffed on protein-rich foods to overstimulate milk production.

    The present method of keeping cows for producing certified milk, in sunless barns, feeding them dry food and tuberculin testing them at frequent intervals and force feeding them assures us a milk of poor quality. Milk from cows out of the sunshine is not good milk. Dr. Hess found that it will not sustain life. The infant death-rate in Toronto, Canada is 29 per cent higher than that of London, England and double that of rural Ontario. Toronto uses pasteurized milk while both London and rural Ontario use natural milk. When pasteurized milk was substituted for raw milk In Toronto, the death rate in three of the citys large homes and hospitals for children increased.

    

    

CHAPTER XIV
THREE FEEDINGS A DAY

    The baby that is healthy at birth possesses the power and ability to digest and assimilate, easily and continuously, an amount of food necessary to produce normal growth. This rate of growth cannot be exceeded, although it may be and often is retarded, by feeding the child excessively for as many children have their growth checked by too much food as by a deficiency.

    Most people have a mania for fat babies; they like to be able to say the baby gains a pound a week. This gives rise to excessive feeding. Most cases of gastro-intestinal disorders in infants are due solely to too much nursing and can be remedied simply by giving the digestive organs a much needed rest.

    When a baby is increasing in weight during the first three months after birth from a half to a pound a week it is merely a rolling on of fat--disease--and is not healthy growth. It is always abnormal and is a snare and a delusion. Fat children do not have great resistance to disease.

    From time immemorial it has been thought necessary to keep babies stuffed with something, to keep them growing and fat--they must be fat. From the time they are born until they die, the greatest anxiety has been to keep their little bodies full of something. During the first year of their lives, infants are, as a rule, stuffed early and late. This is the chief cause of the great mortality at this time .

    After the first year they are allowed more time between meals and hence a less proportion of them die. About one-third of the deaths are in children under one year and only about one-fifth between the ages of one and five. After the age of five children are fed on something like a three-meal plan and comparatively few die between the ages of five and twenty. is true, as Dr. Page says, that those children who reach five years are, as a rule, the toughest and therefore the "fittest" to survive.

    Dr. Page says:

    "The farmer who wants to raise the best possible animal from the calf, lets the creature suckle in the morning at milking-time, and again at night. He is wise enough to feed his calf only twice and the result is, the calf thrives from birth, and sickness is unknown.

    "The same farmer has a baby born, and a contrary course is pursued, with a contrary result. Even before nature supplies the food--before the mother's milk comes--the ignorant nurse undertakes to supply the seeming defficiency, and doses the baby with sweetened water, cow's milk, safron, or the like, instead of giving nothing but what nature supplies, which for the first few days at least is sufficient.

    "The dosing referred to results in stomach-ache, and the cries of pain being mistaken for cries of hunger, down goes another dose, until finally, when the mother's milk does come, the child's stomach often is in a condition to revolt at anything. If the little victim goes along for a few weeks or months, it is generally fed every hour or oftener, unless it happens to be, as is often the case, in a lethargic state for several hours, sleeping off the surfeit as an adult sleeps off a 'drunk.'

    "It is often the case that an infant is eating and vomiting, alternately, from morning till night; indeed, so common is this that it is regarded as altogether natural. It is expected that the child will 'throw up' continually, at least after being fed, and the nurse declares that 'it is all right--nature takes care of all of that.'

    "It is not all right; it is all wrong. Nature indeed revolts at this barbarious treatment of the baby's stomach. Early and late, often during the night, as through the day, the stomach is kept; full and distended, every hiccough is an attempt of the stomach to eject its overload, or evidence of an undigested residue, and the habitual vomiting is simply the result of cramming, until the little, helpless babe has become a confirmed dyspeptic. The mother or nurse habitually flies to the sugar-bowl to relieve the infant's hiccough. But the remedy is worse than the disease and although the hiccough may disappear, it will, if the habit be continued, be succeeded sooner or later by symptoms of deeper disease in the form of so-called cold, feverishness, etc., the result of the excess of food and excess of saccharine maker."

    Happily such gross feeding has disappeared among the better informed classes with a consequent improvement in the health of our babies. But it is still all too true that babies are greatly overfed and are frequency dosed. There are no reasons for doubting that dyspepsia which Page calls "the parent of nearly all our ills," is the result of overfeeding in infancy, confirmed by continued over-indulgence through life.

    However well intentioned mothers and nurses may be, the almost universal custom of constantly feeding infants is extremely cruel, and we may be sure that were such mothers and nurses compelled to take food as often and in the same excessive quantities that it is forced upon the baby, night and day, the abuse would soon be ended. The cruelty of the practice would soon be apparent.

    Children thus punished sooner or later arrive at a condition where their digestive organs are unable to function efficiently. The constant overwork will impair and cripple them. Then it is that we see children literally starving to death on five, six and even more meals a day. As paradoxical as it may seem, many children starve because of being over-fed, just as many adults do.

    Dr. Tilden well says:-- "If mothers could be made to see the fearful price they pay for keeping their babies fat they would hasten to learn a better plan of feeding. Children who are overweight are more susceptible to disease influences than are smaller and lighter children. The fat, chubby baby, everything else being equal, is always the one to take the croup, tonsilitis, diphtheria, scarlet fever, and when a few years older, pneumonia, rheumatism, and other forms of common diseases."

    In his In a Nut Shell, Dr. Dio Lewis relates the following experience of his:

    "When I was a boy my sympathies were awakened by what I thought the crud starving of the calves. They were fed only twice a day, morning and evening. Eating all day myself, I thought it very cruel to tie up these poor, hapless things, and give them no food or drink from morning till night.

    "Each of my brothers had a calf, my sister had a calf, and I had a calf. The others were satisfied with John's assurance that twice a day was enough. I knew better and made such a fuss about their starving my poor little Sam, that the 'powers that be,' ordained that the feeding in the case of young Samuel should be as his owner directed. Upon the procalamation of this ukase I determined to show 'em what's what, and to make sure I fed Samuel myself, and gave him all he wanted once in two hours.

    "At the end of six weeks how the rest of 'em did crow over me. It was true, as they said that at the beginning of my sausage-stuffing system, as they called it, Samuel was the biggest calf in the lot, but at the end of six weeks what a fall there my countrymen. Even my smallest brother's little Fan could give Samuel odds. To cap the climax, when we untied and turned them all out together, little spotted Fan went at my Sam, upon whom my hopes had centered as the bully of the yard, and walloped him in no time. For a long time they wouldn't stop plaguing me about that good-for-nothing calf. My little sister asked me one morning at the breakfast table, 'howls 'ep'opher Sam'el this morning.'

    "From that day to this I have never advocated the frequent feeding of calves. They do best on two meals a day, and now I have no doubt that some calves I wot of would do vastly better on two meals a day."

    At my father's dairy we fed the calves twice a day and they thrived well. I do not recall that we ever had a calf to die and only one or two to ever be sick. I recall an occasion or two when a calf escaped from the pen and got too much milk, whereupon it would develop a severe diarrhea known among farmers and dairymen as the "scours." In our home the babies were fed every two hours during the day and every time they cried at night. Colic, constipation, diarrhea, hives, feverishness, croup, colds, and more severe types of disease were as frequent among the children as they were rare among the calves.

    In those days the medical profession urged two hour feedings and night feedings as well. Many older people have not gotten away from this view yet. They still think that children should be gorged until they are surfeited and sickened or else they are not fed enough.

    Long prior to this time, however, Dr. Page and others had proven that three meals a day are enough for a baby. Asserting that no infant can thrive unless well fed and assuming that a well fed baby is one that secures the minimum amount of suitable food that will suffice to produce a comfortable, happy, thriving baby, with body and limbs well-rounded with flesh, not fat, and whose growth shall be uniform throughout its whole life, and until the frame is fully developed, he declared: "It is my belief, verified by experience in the case of my own infant, and from other substantial proof, that three meals a day, with sufficient restriction at each, will accomplish this end, and are all that should be permitted from birth, and the intervals should be at least five or six hours between meals."

    He assumed, and probably correctly, that the rate of growth of the infant after birth should correspond with its rate of growth before birth. In the case of his own child, he says:-- "Our three-meal infant has doubled in weight at nine months, verifying, to that extent, my theory that the normal growth of infants corresponds to the (normal) foetal growth. She is taller than the average child at this age, and though less heavy than most children, she is more muscular, and, had I permitted it would have become fat, for she has given abundant evidence of the ability to fatten rapidly on three meals."

    He tells us that her sleep was perfect, sound and continuous, there was entire exemption from hiccough, throwing up, colic, constipation, diarrhea, stomach trouble, and all other troubles, and she completely escaped the fat disease, with its pasty complexion. Her limbs lengthened by normal growth, were well-covered and rounded with muscle, her complexion was brown and ruddy from being perfectly nourished and being in the open air during winter, as well as in the spring and summer. She was able to hold her head erect from the fourth day onward, and sat erect on the floor without support at four months.

    My own experience corroborates all of this. I believe it to be an invariable rule that babies fed as herein directed grow faster and develop better than the overfed children of the average home. They do not weigh as much, for they are never allowed to be

    come fat. More than once I have stopped all food but orange juice in my own children to counteract a tendency to get too fat.

    Any normal baby should be able to hold its head erect at four to six days of age. My own children sat erect in my hand without support, I of course balanced them, at one week. They could stand erect in my hand at three months, and stiffen their little backs and hold themselves out on a perfectly horizontal plane, without support, as I held them just above the knees, at four months. At five months the two boys could, while lying on the back, their feet held down, raise themselves up to a sitting position several times in succession. The girl was practically six months old before she could do this. But she accomplished a new "stunt" which I tried. She held herself out horizontally, being held by the legs only, with her back down. All three of them could make a wrestler's bridge at four months. These are: only a few of the things they did that the average child does not do.

    If children are fed three meals a day and are not over-fed, the following high standard will be attained: "ease and comfort through the day and perfect rest at night; freedom from hiccough, vomiting, constipation, 'colds,' diarrhea," digestive disorders, skin eruptions, etc. "There will be a steady gain in weight from. month to month, by reason of healthy growth, without the abnormal accumulation of fat so surely indicative of disease." There will be the greatest possible happiness for both the baby and those who care for him. He will not be forever fretting and crying due to the discomfort of gluttony. Its chances of growing into hale and hearty manhood and womanhood, with good health and splendid physique, will be increased many-fold.

    There is no reasonable basis for the statement, often made, that, while some infants may thrive on three meals a day, some, probably most, infants would starve unless fed more often. We know that in the feeding of hogs, cows, horses, etc., the ration that suffices for one individual suffices for all. Among adult men and women we do not find the need to feed some of them but three meals a day and others six or eight meals a day.

    Infants are fundamentally the same. Their bodies are all constructed alike and function in accordance with the same general principles. One man is a type of the whole race.

    Young animals, like the calf, cat, kid, etc., which grow more rapidly than does the human infant and reach maturity before the infant has passed babyhood, do not require to be fed as often as we are in the habit of feeding infants.

    Dr. Page weaned a kitten at six weeks of age and put her on two meals a day of milk and whole wheat bread. Her meals vere served at 8 A. M. and at 8 P. M. When she was two-thirds grown, he says of her that she "has outstripped the others of the same litter, who have been fed oftener in thrift and growth, nd in muscular activity she excells them all. Certainly no one could well imagine a livelier or happier kitten than 'Topsy.' In flesh her condition has remained about the same as when feeding s commenced."

    It overfeeding tends to stunt growth is well proven. Why should we go on stuffing our children in an effort to fatten them or to force them to grow more rapidly than normal?

    Dr. Tilden says that:-- "If a child (on the three meal plan) grows thin and really loses weight after the second week it will not be an indication that it is not fed often enough. My experience has been that the mother's milk is deficient in some of the important cements, or that she does not give enough."

    In discussing this three meal plan he says:--"If an infant is properly cared for from birth it will not be awake oftener than two or three times--we will say three times--in twenty-four hours. This, then, I assume, is as often as nursing children should be fed, and I have succeeded in influencing a few mothers to feed their babies according to this plan, and the results have been gratifying, indeed.

    "The children are smaller (not fat) and very active, and much stronger and brighter than children fed in the ordinary way."

    He also says:-- "Children fed three times a day will not be troubled with constipation and will not have white curds in the discharges from the bowels."