OUR BABIES

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 145754, 13 February 1917, Page 5

OUR BABIES

Bj HYGEIA.

Published under the auspices of the Royal New Zealand Society .for the Health of Women and Children. “It is wiser to put up a fence at the top of a precipice than to maintain an ambulance at the bottom.’ 1

WHOLE COW’S MILK FOR BABIES,

Nothing comes before us more frequently than such, questions as “Do you believe in whole cow’s milk lor babies?” or “Where the mother’s milk fails, is there really anything better or safer than fresh cow’s milk?” • The people who ask these questions generally assume that the milK would be given more or less diluted with water, and as a rule they take it for granted that some ordinary 1 sugar' would be used for sweetening. However, as dilution with water does not alter the proportion or nature of tho food constituents, but merely means that the child must take a larger quantity of fluid than if the milk wore given pure, feeding with diluted milk may bo regarded as equivalent to feeding with whole milk so far as concerns the problem with which I shall deal today. The addition of a little cane sugar can also be 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 it need to be specially modified and prepared in order to make it a proper'substifute for mother’s milk? This, is _ a question of the utmost importance in the case of all bailies for whom artificial food has to be resorted to during the first year of life, and esiiecially during the first six or eight mouths. The history of baby-feeding in the last half-century shows that the persistent attempts to rear children on unmodified cow’s milk (or on milk so little modified as to be virtually pure cow’s milk) have been disastrous from start to finish. Every few years some specious new proposal is made for getting the stomach of the human infant to “tolerate” (as it is naively* called) cow’s milk. Among recent suggestions of this kind have been “nitrated milk” (that is, cow’s milk to which citrate of soda is added) or dried cow’s milk (sold as a baby-food under different names). ADAPTING FOOD TO THE NATURE AND NEEDS OF THE YOUNG HUMAN BEING. I have referred to the past history of feeding babies with whole cow’s milk as disastrous, but the term is not strong enough to convey any idea' of the millions of children whose lives have been sacrificed in the silly attempt to feed human progeny on food designed for the nutrition and growth of creatures utterly divergent from the human type in nature, structure, and habits. Had rearing babies on mere , diluted cow’s milk proved successful, no one would ever have taken the trouble to do anything else. Research into this question was forced on the world by the fact that from SO to 80 per cent, of the babies reared artificially in the earlier, half of last century were found to die in the first 12 months of life, while the babies who survived were poor specimens. Nearly half a century of observation, and research has brought us nearer ana nearer to a suitable substitute for mother’s milk. Wo can now modify cow’s milk in a simple way, either iu the home or in the laboratory, so as to bring its nature and composition very close indeed to mother’s milk. This is what wo call humanised milk—that is cow’s milk adapted for nourishing the young human being. But, in saying this, wo must never forgot the superiority of suckling by tho mother. This is emphasised in tho 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 human body. Wo can approach it in composition by carefully modifying the milk of some other mammal, but the imitation cannot be made identical with the original, and must/Always be inferior to it. • Nothing Jean rival milk drawn direct from/ the , breast into the baby’s stomach—pure, | fresh, living, blood-warm, ( 4nd unI contaminated by germs. Humanised j milk is superior to any other form of artificial food, but it is not /human | milk ; and the best glass /and iudiai rubber feeding bottle is; a /trouble- | some, unclean, clumsy /contrivance compared with tho living breast. i PROFESSOR BUDIN’S MISTAKE. The great advocate, of feeding with whole cow’s milk, towards the close of last century, was Professor Budin, of Paris. // j Some 25 years'/ago Budin commenced to advocate the use of pure cow’s milk, sterilising by boiling, but otherwise unmodified, for the feeding iiati in—Mrr»Tii i n i»ni ■iwmirf—nrin nmniwiri

of infants. This procedure, so extremely simple, and backed by the wellknown name of Budin, soon gained many adherents in the medical profession ; and the use of pure, sterilised cow’s niilk spread throughout France, but not without marked attention being drawn by impartial observers to its injurious effects on the ultimate welfare of the babies. However, protests wore in vaili. Many years had to elapse before the evils incidental 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 course of events have been repeated over and over again in the disheartening and humiliating history of the artificial rearing of babies. Ordinary condensed milk, dozens of patent baby foods, peptonised milk, and pure cow’s milk sterilised have each been hailed during the last 40 years as solving the difficult question of “How best to bot-tle-feed a nursling?” Each preparation in turn has won the confidence of the public, each has had its run, its enthusiastic advocates, and its multitude of victims, and each has been ultimately discredited or relegated to its proper place, only when time and experience had shown the sacrifice of life and health incidental to its continued use. There is no reason to suppose that it will be otherwise with citrated milk or with dried cow’s milk (in vogue at the moment), or with any other form of nutriment which departs widely from nature’s standard (human milk) in composition and fundamental properties. Indeed, a considerable number of the so-called “baby foods” which have been patented during the last 15 years have consisted mainly, or almost entirely, of dried milk, with or without the addition, of sugar or milk. But though- the medical journals have teemed with references to ,tho injurious consequences observed on the extended use of such preparations, each new competitor, coming heralded with new pretensions, is virtually sure of a good ( sale, especially if it be well “got up and easy to use. Next week I shall show how unfortunate were the ultimate reswfs - of feeding babies on whole cow’s milk, as , advocated towards the close of last / century by Professor Budin. i