The milk of the cow being rather richer in solids than that of woman, it is considered desirable to somewhat dilute the former when it is used as food for the infant. Dr Letheby recommends the addition to it of a third of water, with a little sugar to sweeten it, and to render it more acceptable to the baby palate. It cannot be too forcibly insisted upon that immeasurably the best and safest food for an infant, next to human milk, is the milk of the cow, and nothing else, until it reaches the age of eight or nine months. It is perhaps needless to state that the milk must be perfectly pure and unadulterated, and that it will fail of being this if yielded by an unhealthy cow. The animal’s food and habitat also exercise an important influence on the quality of the milk, that given by grass-fed cows roaming in open pastures undoubtedly being the best and richest.
Different cows yield different qualities of milk; hence, when milk from any particular cow suits an infant, it has been found desirable not to change it.
The newer and fresher the milk the better is it adapted for the child’s use; that which has in the least become soured should be especially rejected.
Sometimes even fresh and good milk is found to disagree with a child. When this is the case it may be remedied by adding a little lime water to it previous to its being drunk. If it were practicable, and within the means of every family to keep their own cow, so that the infant could be fed with the milk directly it came from the animal, nature’s example in giving it direct from the mother’s breast might be followed. The writer remembers, some years ago, the Princess of Wales travelling with her baby on a voyage to and from Denmark, and being accompanied by her bovine purveyor in the shape of an Alderney.
In hot weather, more particularly, if milk be kept even for a short time it is liable to become acid, or “to turn,” as it is called. It is, therefore, always desirable to keep it in a cool cellar till required for use, and in very hot weather it should be stood in ice.
The daily allowance of milk for a child during the first month of its life is two or three pints. M. Guillot says 21⁄2 lbs. avoirdupois is
the least the babe can properly subsist on. He weighed several infants before and after they had taken the breast, and found that they had gained in weight, in quantities varying from 2 oz. to 5 oz.
Opinion is divided as to the value of condensed cows’ milk as a food for infants. Its chief merit seems to be that it affords a substitute for the natural milk in cases where this latter is not obtainable, or where, in consequence of disease amongst the cows of a neighbourhood, it cannot with safety be consumed. Since the maternal fluid, without undergoing alteration or modification, forms so perfect and model a food for infants, it does not seem an unreasonable inference that the milk from the cow, which so nearly approaches it in composition and qualities, should prove most advantageous when partaken of under similar conditions. It has been asserted that condensed milk is inferior in strengthening qualities to the natural cows’ milk. If this be the case it is certainly not due, according to Mr Wanklyn, to any removal of the constituents of the latter. In his useful little work on ‘Milk Analysis’ Mr Wanklyn says: “A year ago a report was spread that these preserved milks were preserved skim-milk, and not preserved new milk. I have myself examined the principal brands of preserved and condensed milk, which are in the London market, and find that the milk which has been condensed, or condensed and preserved, had been charged with its due proportion of fat.”
The physiological facts that in an early stage of infancy the digestion is very feeble, and that until an infant has cut its first teeth there is but little, if any, secretion of saliva, which latter is essential for the conversion in the system of starch into sugar, point, therefore, to the imprudence of feeding very young infants upon so-called “infants’ foods,” where these consist of amylaceous substances. The starch of which these latter are composed not only fails to become assimilated, and therefore to produce no nutrient effect, but clogs up the lower parts of the bowels, and thus gives rise to a train of evils, amongst which may be included indigestion, diarrhœa, vomiting, and not infrequently convulsions and death.
The difference in the mortality between infants under one year of age who annually die of convulsions in England and Scotland is attributed to the fact that whereas the English mother feeds her offspring on thick spoon-food, the Scotch woman nourishes hers from the breast. In ‘The Fourteenth detailed Annual Report of the Registrar-General of Scotland’ it is stated that “The English practice of stuffing their babes with spoon-meat occasioned the death by convulsions of 23,198 children under one year of age during the year 1868, out of 786,858 births; in other words, caused 1 death from convulsions in every 34 of the children born during the year in England. In Scotland, during the same year, only 312 infants under one year of age fell victims to convulsions out of 115,514 children born during the year; in other words, 1 death from convulsions in every 370 born during the year.”