If the little thing must be bottle-fed, hold it in your arms, as nearly in its natural position as possible, and cuddle it, while you hide as far as may be the ugly, unsympathetic substitute, the nursing-bottle.
Ask many mothers how often they feed their babies, and they will tell you in the sentiment, if not the language of one who said, “Well, once in two or three hours usually, but when it has colic, or is restless it tugs away nearly all the time, day and night, until I am entirely worn out”—and I venture to say, the baby is in the same condition. The rule or no rule, with such mothers, is, when the baby cries feed it, when it frets, feed it; when it wakes, feed it; when it goes to sleep, feed it; when it has colic, feed it more; and when it is really ailing, feed it all the time. How much? Why all it will hold, until it is full to overflowing, and then wonder what ails the baby. Wise mothers smile at the absurdity; but remember you are the enquiring ones who count ignorance in such things a shame, (as you should), and you are of the favored few, while the great army of mothers belong to the other class.
For quantity and quality of food for the baby, we refer the reader to the chapter on The Care of the Baby.
Properly fed and properly dressed babies will need little medicine, even a child born with an hereditary tendency to constipation, can be coaxed out of it by regularity of good habits, and food.
For older children and adult life the common sense and good judgment of the home-keeper must decide the quality of food best suited to their individual families. For a subject which demands so much common sense for all mankind, and wise thinking, less reasonable thought is spent upon it, than upon any other branch of science the world over. Says a late writer, “It is universally known as a fact, although not much considered, that bone and blood, brain and brawn, are directly manufactured from food eaten. It is now beginning to be discovered that for centuries people have not eaten the right foods to make the best bodies. They have been ignorant of the physiological laws of nutrition, of the proper combinations and proportions of essential elements, of the vital importance attaching to such knowledge. They have cultivated artificial and abnormal tastes, sought momentary gratification in eating, and gradually demoralized their natural instincts.” There has been no study made of the development of nations as influenced by its food supply. It would give much food for thought, we have no doubt, and be a cause for surprise that the quality and quantity of food could make so much difference.
Dr. Henderson, in the Popular Science Monthly, says: “When you remember that we are dressed during the whole period of our social life, and that we eat three times every day, eleven hundred times a year, it is astonishing that these very human arts (dressing and eating) have not been brought to greater perfection. Women weep, work, and suffer the same to-day as at the dawn of the race, because they feed the young on forbidden fruit. So the children grow into men and women with curved spines, unshapely, unsymmetrical forms, and damaged brains, to suffer all through life with ills of both body and mind.”
Dr. Dio Lewis was called at one time to see the child of a friend, who “Did not know what was the matter with the dear little girl.” Dr. Lewis looked her over carefully, and then astonished the mother with a request for an entire suit of the child’s clothing. When they were brought to him he took the little one with him, and followed by the curious mother, went out into the flower-garden. He chose for his object lesson, one of the most thrifty and beautiful of the many lovely rosebushes, and dressed it in the child’s clothes; much to the delight of the little girl.
“What are you doing that funny thing for, Dr. Lewis?” she asked. “Why I want to see whether this will grow as you do when it is dressed so finely in your clothes,” said the wise doctor. “Leave it just so until I come again day after to-morrow, and we shall see how it likes it.”
He came and of course found the thrifty bush withered and dying. “Why, what is the matter here?” said the doctor to the little one.