OUR BABIES

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 3006, 17 February 1917, Page 5

OUR BABIES

fBT HIGEIA.I ,

Published under the auspices of the Royal New Zealand Society for .the Health of Women and Children. "It is •wiser 'to put a fence at the top of a precipice than to maintain an ambulance at, the bottom." WHOLE COW'S MILK If Oil BABIES. Nothing comes beforo us more fro quenfcly than such questions .is "Do roi believe in whole cow's milk for babies?' or "Where the mother's milk fails,. i< there really anything better or safer thai fresh cow's milk?" The people who ask these question: generally assume that th« milk would b< given , more or less diluted with water and as a rule they take it for grantee that some ordinary Bugar would be. uset for sweetening. However, as dilutior with water does not alter the proportioi or nature of the food constituents, bill merely means .that the child must take i larger quantity of fluid than if the mill were 'given pure, feeding '.with dilutee milk may be regarded as 'equivalent t{ feeding with whole milk so far as con cerns the problem with which Iv shal deal to-day. The addition of a \little cane 6ugar can also bo left out of account. ' The" crux <of the whole matter is. Should we regard-cow's milk as a suitable, food for young babies, or does if need to -be specially modified and prepared in order to make it a proper substitute for mother's millc? This is ; question of .tho utmost importance in tin case of all babies for whom artificia' food has to be resorted to during tin firatr year of life, and especially during thfi first sir or eight months. Tho history of baby-feeding in the lasl half-century shows that the persistent at temps to rear children on unmodified cow's milk (or on milk so little modified ns to be virtually pure cow's milk) hnv< been disastrous "from start' to finish Every few years some specious new proposal is made for getting the stomact of the human infant to "tolerate" (as il iajiaively called) cow's milkAdapting Food to the Nature and Need: of the Young Human I.have referred to the past history oi feeding babies with whole cow's milk j as disastrous, but the term is not strong enough to convey any idea c-i the millions of childron whose lives have been sacrificed in ths silly. to feed liumau progeny on food designed lor the nutrition and of creatures utterly divergent i>om tils. human type in nature, structure, sad habits. Kad rearing- babies 011 mere diluted cow's milk tiioved successful, no 011 c would ever have taken the trouble to dc anything else. Research into this question was foroed on tho world by the fact that from 50 to 80 per cent, of the babies reared artificially in the earlier half of last century were, found to die in the first 13 months of life, while the babies who survived were poor speciments. v ' Nearly half a century of observation and research has brought us nearer and nearer to a suitable substitute for mother's milk. We can ipow modify cow's milk in a simple way, either in the home or in "the-laboratory, so as to bring its nature and composition very close indeed to mother's milk. This is what we call humanised milk—that is cow's milk adapted for nourishing the young human being. But, in saying this, wo must never forget the superiority of suckling by tho mother. This is emphasised in • the- following passages from the society's books:— "Cow's milk is right and natural for a calf, but utterly wrong and unnatural for a baby. "No device will ever ensure to the infant advantages at all comparable to suckling by its mother. Human milk cannot be made outside the' humftn body. We can-approach it in composition by carcftolly modifying the milk of' some other mammal, but the imitation cannot he made identical with the original, and must always bo 1 inferior to it. Nothing can rival milk drawn direct from the breast into the baby's stomach —pure, fresh, living, blood-warm, and uncontapiinated.by germs.. Humanised milk is superior to any other form of artificial food; but it is not human milk; and tho best glass and indiarubber feeding bottle is a troubleso'fne, unclean, clumsy ' contrivance compared with tho living breast." N 'Professor Budin's Mistake. The great advocate of feeding with whole cbw's milk, towards tho close of last century,, was Professor Budin, of Paris. Some 25 years ago Budin commenced to advocate the use of pure cow's milk, sterilised by boiling, but otherwise unmodified, for the feeding of infants. This procedure, so-- extremely simple, and backed by'v the well-known name of Budin, soon gained many adherents in the medical profession; and tho use of pure, sterilised cow's milk spread throughout France, _ but not without marked attention being drawn by impartial observers to its injurious effects on the ultimate welfare ofithei babies. However, protests wore in vain, Many rears had to elapse before the evils in. :idental to the feeding of babies with pure cow's milk were clearly demonstrated by the publication of classified records of infants so treated. It must, be borne in mind that this jourse of events has -been repeated over md over again in the disheartening and Humiliating history .of the artificial rearing'of babies.