Domestic economy : comprising the laws of health in their application to home life and work : for teachers and students / by Arthur Newsholme and Margaret Eleanor Scott.

  • Arthur Newsholme
Date:
1906
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Domestic economy : comprising the laws of health in their application to home life and work : for teachers and students / by Arthur Newsholme and Margaret Eleanor Scott. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

    312/361 (page 296)
    for infants. It possesses only one advantage : its casein is much more easily digested than that of fresh cow’s milk ; but although infants fed on condensed milk become very fat, they are generally unhealthy and weak on their legs. There is a large excess of sugar in condensed milk, and some- times a deficiency of cream. Infants fed solely on condensed milk have been known to develop symptoms of scurvy just as do adults who take no potatoes or other fresh vegetables. Patent Foods may be added to the cow’s milk with which an infant is fed, after it is seven or nine months old. Among the best of these is Mellin’s food, as it contains no unal tered starch. Benger’s and Savory and Moore’s are also very good. IMost other artificial foods are to be avoided, and even those mentioned do not take the place of cream and milk, but should be added to them. For the first six months of an infant's life avoid all artificial patent foods, unless under medical advice. The diseases to which infants are most prone are trace- able almost entirely to improper feeding. Many thousands of infants are annually sacrificed to the ignorance or care- lessness or prejudice of their parents as regards food. These diseases may be classed as /] j Diseases due to irritation of the alimentary canal. Thrush, indigestion, and diarrhoea are the commonest of these. Infants are also very liable to convulsions, sometimes fatal, and the most common cause of convulsions is improper food, which, by its irritant effect, sets up reflex convulsive move- Many of the symptoms for which teething is supposed to be responsible are really due to the taking of unsuitable food, either stale or fermented, or of a kind not appropriate to the age of the infant. (2) Diseases due to defective nutrition. Of these, anaemia and wasting, rickets, and scurvy are the most frequent, and these also are due to improper feeding. Rickets is probably due chiefly to deficiency in fatty food. It can be cured best by adding cream to the food or giving cod-liver oil. It is a mistake to suppose that it is due to deficiency of lime-salts. In this disease the bones remain soft and become bent and distorted. Hence the bow-iegged limbs so often seen. The ribs are similarly affected, and the ribs falling in, the chest becomes ‘ pigeon-breasted, and