Feeding in the first year of infancy / by Joseph E. Winters.
- Winters, Joseph Edcil, 1848-1922.
- Date:
- [1903]
Licence: In copyright
Credit: Feeding in the first year of infancy / by Joseph E. Winters. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.
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![Where mother’s milk is seriously defective in fat, the fontanelle is greatly depressed; every mark of the pro- found innutrition is identical with what is witnessed where the food has been a fat-free cereal. This parallel should demonstrate to the most puerile the sinfulness of the cereal fad, and of the 'propagation of low fat. That the abundant fat in a superior quality of woman'*s nulk is physiological, and prerequisite, is further em- phasized—made unequivocal, inconfutable, unanswer- able—by the presence in the brain of 8 per cent, fat, in the nerves 22 per cent., both of which are developing with great rapidity; in the marrow of bone, where the red blood cells are chiefly formed, 96 per cent. fat. The waxy pallor, the ominous blue vessels; the un- ceasing restlessness in one, and the imperturbable list- lessness in another, are adequately explained by the denutrition of bone marrow and of nerve. In a breast-fed child nutritive 'vigor is proportionate to the fat. A robust mother of eighteen had a child of unusual development. Her breast milk contained 5.84 per cent, fat. A vigorous wet-nurse of nineteen years with a nursling of remarkable growth had 5.76 per cent. fat. The strippings are 1.50 to 2 per cent, higher in fat than the fore-milk. A breast-fed child whose nutrition and development would be considered perfect probably receives from 6 to 7.50 per cent, fat.* A superior quality of woman’s milk must be the stand- ard for a substitute. * Reports of diarrhoea the effect of excess of fat in mother’s milk, and of convulsions from high fat feeding, are merely exam- ples of superficial and superlatively crude diagnoses. [3]](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22480092_0005.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
