A practical treatise on the management and diseases of children / by Richard T. Evanson and Henry Maunsell.
- Evanson, Richard Tonson, 1800-1871.
- Date:
- 1843
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: A practical treatise on the management and diseases of children / by Richard T. Evanson and Henry Maunsell. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)
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![impelled by his instinct* on the one hand, and restrained by his ma- nagers on the other, devours, in secret, and often to his great injury, the unripe, ill-cuhivated,and pernicious trash of the fruit-stall, instead of moderately using, as he should be permitted to do, such whole- some, cooling, and antiseptic fruit as the season may afford. Much learned trifling has also escaped from writers with respect to the pro- priety and necessity of living naturally, and on such food as is presented to us by nature: and we are often told that children should be fed upon bread and milk alone ; because the former is pre- pared by the simplest cookery, and the latter in what they call the laboratory of nature. Dr. Fordyce, however, has met the question, and settled it at once, by declaring that man has no natural food. Let those who may be startled by this proposition call to their recol- lection the difference between the milk afforded by a cow kept alive upon the weeds and scanty vegetation of a neglected common, and one fed upon the riches of a pasture which has experienced the transforming power of cultivation ; let them recollect that the wheat, of which their so-called natural diet is composed, is itself the result of a long course of cultivation, and a full employment of all the re- sources of the complicated art of agriculture. The potato, says Dr. Paris, among many other examples, — whose introduction has added so many millions to our population, derives its origin from a small and bitter root which grows wild in Chili, and at Monte Video.t The science of Dietetics is, in truth, an uncertain one ; any facts that we know respecting it, being liable to be influenced by many varying conditions, all of which should be taken into the considera- tion of every individual case ; and after all, no theory should be permitted the slightest weight in a particular instance in which it may be contradicted by experience. If an article of food, in favour of whose wholesomeness we have universal testimony, should dis- agree with a certain individual, its use with that person must not be insisted upon.J VIII. CLEANLINESS. The importance of the excretion from the skin is universally ac- knowledged, and is sufficiently proved by the amount of the daily perspiration, which was estimated by Lavoisier and Seguin at an average of lib. 14oz. in the adult.§ This discharge being natural * We have the authority of Dr. Paris for the fact, that artisans and labourers, in the confined manufactories of large towns, suffer prodigiously in their health, whenever a failure occurs in the crops of common fruits. This fact was remarkably striking in the years 1804 and 1805. — Art. Dietetics, in Cyc, Prac. Med. f Op. citat. X Some very unexpected facts and opinions with regard to the nutritive properties of various kinds of food have been lately brought forward in the Report of the Com- mission on Gelatin, to the Academy of Sciences of Paris. A translation of this remarkable document, in the preparation of which MM. Thenard, Dumas, Flourens, Serres, Breschet, and Magendie, were engaged during ten years, will be found in the Medical Press, vol. vi., p. 129, and will well repay the trouble of perusal. [Note to 4tli Edition.] { Lavoisier's Traite Elementaire de Chimie.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21118346_0049.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
