SPECIAL FOODS
Most patent foods are made up of starches and various kinds of sugars, and some of them have dried milk or dried egg albumin added. Many flours under fanciful names are sold on the market today. For instance, one flour with a very fanciful name is simply the old fashioned "flour ball" that our great, great grandmothers made; and, by the way, perhaps there is no flour for which we are more grateful in the preparation of infant food than the flour ball which is prepared as follows: A pound of flour is tied tightly in a cheesecloth and is put into a kettle of boiling water which continues to boil for five or six hours, at the end of which time the cheesecloth is removed and the hard ball, possibly the size of an orange, is placed on a pie pan and allowed slowly to dry out in a low temperatured oven. At the end of two or three hours, the ball, having sufficiently dried, has formed itself into a thick outer peel which is removed, while the heart which is very hard and thoroughly dry, is now grated on a clean grater, and this flour has perhaps helped more specialists to serve more sick babies than any other form of starch known. It is used just as any other flour is used—wet up into a paste, made into a gruel, which is boiled for twenty minutes before it is added to the milk.
Whey is sometimes used in the preparation of sick babies' food and is prepared as follows:
To a pint of fresh lukewarm cow's milk are added two teaspoons of essence of pepsin, liquid rennet or a junket tablet. It is stirred for a moment, then allowed to stand until firmly coagulated, which is then broken up and the whey strained off through a muslin.
The heavy proteins remain in the curd, and the protein that goes through with the whey is chiefly the lactalbumin.
CHAPTER XIX
THE FEEDING PROBLEM
A friend of ours who presides over a court of domestic relations in a large city, recently told us that he believed much trouble was caused in families—many divorces, occasioned, and many desertions provoked—because improperly fed babies were cross and irritable and so completely occupied the time of the mother, who, herself, knew nothing about mothercraft or the art of infant feeding. Consequently, the home was neglected and unhappy, quarreling abounded and failure, utter failure, resulted. The children were constantly cross, and so much of the mother's time was consumed in caring for these irritable, half-fed babies, that the home was disheveled, the meals never ready, the husband's home-coming was a dreaded occurrence, and he, endeavoring to seek rest and relaxation, usually sought for it in the poolroom or the saloon, with the usual climax which never fails to bring the time-honored results of debauch—despair and desertion.
In the beginning of this book we paid our respects to the present-day educational system which does not provide an adequate compulsory course in which all women could be given at least a working knowledge of home making and the care and feeding of the babies; so that statement need not be repeated in this chapter. But we wish to add, in passing, that ignorance is the basis and the foundation of more unhappy homes, broken promises, panicky divorces, and shattered hopes, as well as of more deaths during the first year of infancy, than any other cause. And in speaking of its relationship to babycraft, we believe that ignorance concerning normal stools, how many times a day the bowels should move; how much a baby's stomach holds; how often he should be fed, etc.—I say it is ignorance of these essential details that lies at the bottom of many problems which come up during the first year, particularly the "feeding problem."