It is often impossible to find any good reason for popular maternal notions as to what children should eat, drink and avoid, but the broad principle underlying it appears to be that anything nice is necessarily harmful. “Children should be given only simple food.” Doubtless!—but what is “simple food”? Food, I take it, which it is a simple job to digest. But it is quite a mistake to imagine that every insipid mess is easy, and every tasty relish difficult, of digestion. Some insipid foods are easily digestible and some not, and some tasty foods are indigestible and some digestible. The taste and savour are in fact no guide whatever. To pursue our particular example:—bacon fat is an exceptionally easily assimilated form of fatty matter, rivalling cod liver oil in that respect; and every whit as useful in the treatment of malnutrition.
Again, the method of preparation makes all the difference as to digestibility. Cheese, for instance, of the cheaper varieties, is proverbially hard to digest, for the obvious reason that it is difficult for the digestive organs to dissolve its rather leathery substance, but a crumbling Stilton taken in reasonable quantities is far from being so; and even less expensive cheeses, if grated and cooked, are quite harmless, so that a dish of macaroni just flavoured with a little grated cheese is a far more suitable food for a child than the pasty gruel that passes under the style of oatmeal porridge southward of the Tweed.
The hardy Italian peasant children are as regularly brought up on the dish I have just described as the young Scot on oatmeal porridge; and as, unless given all day and every day, both are perfectly suited to young digestions, there is no good reason why both should not take their turn in the nursery cuisine.
A great deal that has been said is no doubt equally applicable to temperate climates, but in these healthy children rarely suffer from want of appetite, whereas in the trying time of the year in the Tropics there is often a strong temptation to eat too little to keep up the needs of the system, and hence this exhortation to the adoption for children of a varied and tempting diet is especially applicable to those brought up in hot countries.
A separate work would be required to deal adequately with the subject of the present chapter, so that it is impossible to do more than offer a few general hints on the subject, and it accordingly remains only to consider the question of the necessity, or otherwise, of children being sent off to a hill station during the worst part of the tropical year. To do so is often a terrible tax on the financial resources of the parents, and there can be no doubt that the advantages of the hill climates over those of the plains, though no doubt very real, are much over-rated; for the hills have special dangers of their own. Some years ago I had occasion to compare the sick rates of a number of the largest Indian boarding schools, and was much astonished to find that the justly celebrated “La Martiniere,” at Lucknow, had a somewhat smaller sick rate than the great Laurence Military Asylum for soldiers’ children, which was then under my care. Now if the difference in favour of the hill climate were as great as is popularly supposed, this could hardly be the case; as Lucknow is by no means an exceptionally healthy plains station, and the site of the La Martiniere leaves much to be desired. Yet the hill school would have been counted a healthy one anywhere, for in two years we had but two deaths among the whole half-thousand boys and girls. Apart from the mere question of personal comfort, the main advantage of the hill climates are their freedom from malaria, but this ought to be guarded against in the plains by proper metallic gauze protection of the nursery; while, on the other hand, hill climates are extremely treacherous for children during the rains. Assuming the adoption of rational precautions against malaria, I believe that whatever may be the case during the dry, hot season, the majority of children would be better in the plains than on the hills during rains. Part of this is perhaps due to the increased sanitary difficulties; for typhoid fever is endemic in almost all hill stations; but the bulk of it is due to the raw, clammy chills of a sodden atmosphere, and given an equal number of children, it is a matter of common experience with medical officers that the doctor’s visiting book will often show an enormously larger number of calls in these sanitaria (?) than in the much maligned stations below.
Hence, while in no way counselling the retention of children in the plains during the hot, dry season, by those who can well afford to send them away, I trust that the facts adduced may tend to the comfort of those whose finances do not admit of such a luxury, and the question whether great sacrifices should be made to do so should be determined by the comparative healthiness, or otherwise, of the locality in the plains where they may be stationed.
The amount of sickness, both of a serious and trifling character, on most hill stations is perfectly alarming, and there cannot be the least doubt that there are a great many stations in the plains that are far less unhealthy for Europeans the whole year round, so what is gained by resorting to the hills is, in most cases, not health, but personal comfort.
Another caution:—do not always jump to the conclusion that a child is necessarily suffering from malaria when it becomes feverish. The temperature-regulating mechanism of a child is much more delicate than that of an adult, so that very little suffices to put it out of gear; and an indiscretion in diet which would show its effects in an adult merely in the form of a bad head and a worse temper, will perhaps send a child’s temperature up to 104° F. or over. Such cases are almost as common in Europe, but unlike the Anglo-tropical matron, the English mother does not usually go about with a clinical thermometer in her pocket, and they usually pass undetected, as far as the element of temperature is concerned, and are ascribed to their true cause of some upset of the digestive organs, which yields easily to some mild laxative. More than half the cases of so-called fever are of this nature, and as the diagnosis of malaria can only be made, even by a doctor, by a careful examination of the patient’s blood under a powerful microscope, it is wise in his absence to try the effect of such simple measures as a dose of “Gregory” or grey powder before needlessly drugging the child with quinine.
Lastly, and most important of all, do not always go rushing off to your medicine cupboard because the dear child “looks so pale,” or is protesting more vociferously than usual at the crumpling of some of the rose leaves of its couch. Anyway, it is no good emptying drugs down the interior of the poor child’s neck till you feel pretty sure of your reason for doing so. It is very natural and excusable that a mother should be so anxious to “do something”; but unless sure of your reasons for acting, the something done is too apt to be something wrong. The amount of needless drugging of children that goes on is cruel, even when it is not harmful; and I cannot help thinking the little ones would be a good deal better on the whole if mothers would make a rule of swallowing a duplicate spoonful of nastiness for every one they are so anxious to administer to their progeny.