A child asking for something to eat, is frequently, in a severe illness, the first favourable symptom; we may generally then prognosticate that all will soon be well again.
If a child refuse his food, neither coax nor tempt him to eat: as food without an appetite will do him more harm than it will do him good; it may produce either sickness, bowel-complaint, or fever. Depend upon it, there is always a cause for a want of appetite;—perhaps his stomach has been over-worked, and requires repose; or his bowels are loaded, and Nature wishes to take time to use up the old material;—there might be fever lurking in his system; Nature stops the supplies, and thus endeavours, by not giving it food to work with, to nip it in the bud;—there might be inflammation; food would then be improper, as it would only add fuel to the fire; let, therefore, the cause be either an overworked stomach, over-loaded bowels, fever, or inflammation, food would be injurious. Kind Nature if we will but listen to her voice, will tell us when to eat, and when to refrain.
159. When a child is four or five years old, have you any objection to his drinking tea?
Some parents are in the habit of giving their children strong (and frequently green) tea. This practice is most hurtful. It acts injuriously upon their delicate, nervous system, and thus weakens their whole frame. If milk does not agree, a cup of very weak tea, that is to say, water with a dash of black tea in it, with a table-spoonful of cream, may be substituted for milk; but a mother must never give tea where milk agrees.
160. Have you any objection to a child occasionally having either cakes or sweetmeats?
I consider them as so much slow poison. Such things both cloy and weaken the stomach, and thereby take away the appetite, and thus debilitate the frame. Moreover "sweetmeats are coloured with poisonous pigments." A mother, surely, is not aware, that when she is giving her child Sugar Confectionery she is, in many cases, administering a deadly poison to him? "We beg to direct the attention of our readers to the Report of the Analytical Sanitary Commission, contained in the Lancet of the present week (Dec. 18, 1858), on the pigments employed in colouring articles of Sugar Confectionery. From this report it appears that metallic pigments of a highly dangerous and even poisonous character, containing chromic acid, lead, copper, mercury, and arsenic, are commonly used in the colouring of such articles."
If a child be never allowed to eat cakes and sweetmeats, he will consider a piece of dry bread a luxury, and will eat it with the greatest relish.
161. Is bakers' or is home-made bread the most wholesome for a child?
Bakers' bread is certainly the lightest; and, if we could depend upon its being unadulterated, would, from its lightness, be the most wholesome; but as we cannot always depend upon bakers' bread, home-made bread, as a rule should be preferred. If it be at all heavy, a child must not be allowed to partake of it; a baker's loaf ought then to be sent for, and continued to be eaten until light home-made bread can be procured. Heavy bread is most indigestible. He must not be allowed to eat bread until it be two or three days old. If it be a week old, in cold weather, it will be the more wholesome.
162. Do you approve either of caraway seeds or of currants in bread or in cakes—the former to disperse wind, the latter to open the bowels?