The management of cholera infantum is not to be coveted; the best of all is to know how to prevent it. I sincerely believe that the greater number of cases of cholera are induced by the unnatural custom of preparing a bottle of food, and putting the child in a position to sleep while it sucks from it. Where is the woman or man who can sleep and eat at the same time? The mode of preparing it is generally putting a little milk with a quantity of water, and a little sugar, into a half-pint bottle—if the babe is only a few days old—and this is kept close to its warm body for hours, or what is just as bad, re-warmed every time it is suspected that the baby is hungry.
Pure milk needs no watering; it is simply converted into slops by so doing. It contains naturally sugar, butter, lime, and all that is required for the nourishment of the young.
The saliva of the glands of the mouth and the juices of the stomach are as fully able to dilute and separate the life principles of milk for a babe, as they are to prepare solid food for the maintenance of the adult. We eat a beefsteak in its purity, risking the after effects; were there more ventures in administering pure food to helpless infants, no doubt but there would soon appear a change in the physique of our young men and women.
To insure a healthy meal, an infant should invariably be fed with care before laying it down from the very first day of its attempt to suck from a bottle, for the following reasons:—
As the babe dozes, its breath goes down the tube; the heat and churning motion together separate the butter globules from the fluid so that they cannot get through the holes, unless, as is often the case, the holes are made too large, for some selfish convenience. And by this latter means the danger of strangulation becomes more imminent if the child is left alone. Scores of times have I seen the infant tugging away between naps, for hours, trying to get what it should have finished in less than twenty or thirty minutes, and been sleeping soundly.
Numbers of them cry half the night, or are pacified by having the rubber nipple of a filthy-smelling sucking-bottle continually stuck in the mouth. Thus some babes are literally worn out sucking, trying to get a bare subsistence. Even if an infant nurses from the breast, it is wrong to put off suckling it till the powers are almost overcome by sleep. While we are aware that its breath cannot go into the mamma, the liability to strangulation is none the less apparent.
There can be no more important duties to perform in the capacity of housekeeping than that of caring for the helpless babe. Women doctors, or, more properly speaking, doctresses of medicine, although usually treated with less courtesy by doctors, are, nevertheless, by them considered to be in their proper sphere in the confinement-room and nursery. While I feel under no obligations to them for their charity, I must admit their honesty and truthfulness in the matter; for surely woman cannot fill a single position in the world so freighted with material, out of which the moral and physical condition of humanity can be affected either for good or evil.
CHAPTER XVI.
CONVENIENT METHODS FOR RAISING INFANTS WITHOUT THE BREAST.
A small bottle holding an ounce, for the first, should be in readiness; a smooth round hole made in the cork, through which to put a quill; the whole to be well covered with a strong soft linen, the edges of which should be hemmed and securely tied under the lip of the bottle. This constituted a sucking-bottle of fifty years ago. The modern rubber tube and nipple, if composed of healthy material, removed from the mouth and washed as soon as possible after using, may do as well. If a child is allowed to sleep all it naturally inclines to, four ounces of milk or two of cream will suffice it during the day, say from seven or eight o’clock in the morning until six in the evening. From that time until bed-time, say nine or ten o’clock, half as much. After ten, the feeding should be as seldom as will allow of comfort. In this way, one pint of milk or half a pint of pure cream will be sufficient to last a babe of from one to four weeks old, a whole day, allowing the cream to be increased to nearly a pint by watering. The quantity should be increased gradually, while the number of meals during the night should decrease. By these means a babe will soon cease to be any trouble after bed hours. Only remember that it has nerves, through which it is supplied with feelings.
A small bottle insures renewal of the food, for positively the same milk that a child has tried to draw from a bottle for any length of time is not fit to be re-warmed or offered to it again; and if persisted in, will act as a slow poison, which may develop into cholera at any period of infantile existence. Again, if milk flows evenly, the butter globules do not form in the bottle. If the milk flows too fast into the child’s mouth, the healthful benefits of a meal is lost.