Bringing up the normal child / editor: Henry Smith Williams, M.D., LL.D.

Date:
[1914]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Bringing up the normal child / editor: Henry Smith Williams, M.D., LL.D. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    are quite as wholesome as the vegetable ones, and often more easy of digestion. Not infrequently an anxious mother raises the question as to whether she may not be “brutaliz- ing” the moral nature of her child by allowing it to eat meat. Perhaps the best answer is to point to the case of the Eskimos who, living on an almost exclusively meat diet, are the most peaceable of all known races; contrasted with certain of the South Sea Islanders that, living almost exclusively on vegetable products, are the most ferocious and blood-thirsty of savages. In point of fact, the digestive apparatus is equipped with ferments that break up the food into their constituents, and these are quite the same for vegetable and animal proteins. By the time the foodstuffs have gone through the diges- tive laboratory, and found their way into the sys- tem, they are so unified that the chemist can distinguish no difference between those of vege- table and those of animal origin. Let the dietary of your child, then, include a reasonable amount of meat, the great muscle- builder, along with a reasonable supply of fats (of which the best is butter), and liberal quantities of starchy foods, fresh vegetables, fruits, and nuts. Remember that the body of the child is a ma- chine that runs at high pressure, exhausting a [9]
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