Infant formula

“ But there still remain all over the country a large number of busy and successful general practitioners who have given little or no study to formulas for infant feeding, a condition fortunately due to the fact that the majority of the mothers whom they attend nurse their babies. ”

“ The breast-milk, and nothing beside, must form the nutriment of the child for at least nine months; and if the infant is delicate or strumous, it will be prudent to continue it even six months longer. When the period arrives for the substitution of artificial food, it must be carefully selected; it must be appropriate to the advancing age of the child; nutritious and unirritating. Good air and daily exercise, and the bath or sponging, are of much importance ”

“ After its birth she feeds it from her breasts, before birth through its umbilical vessels, but she originally gives only the eight chromosomes as the father does, and the child's vital principle builds up the body from this foundation. The popular notion that the foetus in the womb is formed through some process of literal abstraction from the maternal tissues is no more true than that the infant is so built up while it is suckling ”

“ In the winter months when the baby is first taken out, it is better to carry it in the arms, as it will be kept warmer in this way, and if it does become chilled it will be more quickly noticed.
Characteristics of the Healthy Infant.— The average weight of an infant at birth is about seven pounds, and its length is about twenty inches; the extremes are four pounds or a little less up to eleven pounds. The head and trunk of the child are developed out of proportion to the limbs. ”

“ The choice of the aperient, or the dose, or the exact condition of the health of the infant, or whether it is an aperient at all that is required, are points entirely overlooked: a little medicine is thought necessary, because the child appears unwell, and a purgative, or a little white powder, is forthwith given. The great art of medicine is the proper application of the proper medicine, in the proper dose, at the proper time ”

“ That Darwin gave the true explanation of a great many of the alleged cases is perfectly clear to us. When the child is born with any peculiar characteristic, the mother hunts for some experience in the preceding months that might explain it. If she succeeds in finding any experience of her own at all resembling in its effects the effect which the infant shows, she considers she has proved causation, has established a good case of prenatal influence. ”

“ THE RATE OF GROWTH.—When we recall the definite and often marked differences in the physical character of women, such as weight and height, it is surprising to learn that the prenatal development of their children proceeds with uniform speed. One very practical result is that the physician is thus enabled, at the birth of a premature infant, to estimate accurately the period of its development. ”

“ C 65 Figure C 65 enables us to examine into the influence exercised by a longer or shorter interval after the preceding birth on the vitality of a child, according as to whether the child was not breast-fed at all or only moderately or amply so. The black oblongs demonstrate that the average infant mortality falls regularly and decisively according to the length of time between the birth of the children considered and their predecessors. The average mortality of infants who are born in rapid succession—under one year, one to one and a quarter years, amounts to over 25 and to 22 per cent. ”

“ By a rigid attention to these measures the mother adopts the surest antidote, indirectly, to overcome the constitutional predisposition to that disease, the seeds of which, if not inherited from the parent, are but too frequently developed in the infant during the period of nursing; and, at the same time, she takes the best means to engender a sound and healthy constitution in her child. ”

“ Any mother who has followed the reports of pure milk commissions, and heard the talks and lectures given by specialists in infant feeding, must realize the tremendous chance she takes in weaning her baby. ”

“ Perhaps, my dear friend, the cause is your own fault—over dosing in the first place; be cautious, as soon as the little one makes its entrance into this world. Do as I directed before, then take a piece of fresh butter the size of a bird’s egg, mix it up with loaf-sugar, put a little piece at a time into the new-born infant’s mouth, and it will suck it down; this will cleanse its mouth and alimentary canal, and open all obstructions in the intestines. Let the child have the breast as soon as possible; the first milk will purge the infant sufficiently, without having recourse to cathartics ”

“ At the sixth month it should be twice the weight at birth. The average weight at the twelfth month is 20 to 21 ℔. The increase of weight in artificially fed is less regular than in breast-fed babies.
Food.—There is but one proper food for an infant, and that is its mother’s milk, unless when in exceptional circumstances the mother is not allowed to nurse her child. Artificially fed children are much more liable to epidemic diseases. The child should be applied to the breast the first day to induce the flow of milk. ”

“ Any error, therefore, in diet or regimen is now to be most carefully avoided. 'Tis true that the infant, who is of a sound and healthy constitution, in whom, therefore, the powers of life are energetic, and who up to this time has been nursed upon the breast of its parent, and now commences an artificial diet for the first time, disorder is scarcely perceptible, unless from the operation of very efficient causes. ”

“ In a more technical sense, however, the use of the term embryo is limited to the first six weeks of pregnancy and designates the condition of the young creature before it has acquired the form and the organs of the infant; after that time the unborn child is called a fetus. Embryonic development, therefore, in the strictest sense of the term, chiefly involves the shifting of various groups of cells and the bestowal upon them of different kinds of activity. ”

“ Don't be too anxious to increase the quality, or quantity, of your baby's food. It is much better to go slow and have a well baby, than to try to force matters and get into all kinds of trouble. No science calls for more elementary common sense, than the science of infant therapy. ”

“ Premature infants may, under favorable circumstances and assiduous care, live and thrive. Immediately after birth the child should be placed in a warm bath, and then wrapped in cotton. The baths should be warmer than usual, and must be frequently repeated. Awaken the child every one or two hours to feed it. Milk (woman’s milk is the best) must be given it by a teaspoon. With a view to the better development of the lungs, it may be excited to cry by a slight irritation. Do not bring such children into the open air for several months after the birth, as their passages are readily affected. ”

“ If there be milk in the breast, which may be readily ascertained by squeezing the nipple between the finger and the thumb, the infant should, at first, be applied—not frequently, as some do, but at considerable intervals, say until the milk be properly secreted—every four hours; when the milk flows, the child ought to be applied more frequently, but still at stated times. ”

“ Because if we go on developing in the way we are at present doing, ever depending more and more on our brains, and the head of the new born infant tends to increase with the natural development of the brain, the day will come when the birth of a child is absolutely blocked by the relative diameter of its head and of its mother’s pelvic bones. ”

“ What should guide one as to the quantity of food to be given to any infant??
(1) The size of the infant's stomach at the different months; (2) the amount of milk which the healthy nursing infant gets; (3) the quantities with which most children do best. The table of quantities and intervals of feeding, on page 108, gives the average figures derived from these sources. It is seldom wise to go beyond the limits there stated; nor should one insist upon giving any fixed amount if it is clearly more than the child wants or can be made to take except by continued coaxing. ”

“ Their developement is a natural process. It is too frequently, however, rendered a painful and difficult one, by errors in the management of the regimen and health of the infant, previously to the coming of the teeth, and during the process itself. ”

“ I most frequently meet with examples of the second class in the delicate woman, who, having had two or three children in quick succession, her health has given way, so that she has all the symptoms arising from undue suckling, when perhaps the infant at her breast is not more than two or three months old. ”

“ This insufficiency of quantity shows itself at different periods after the infant's birth—at two months, three, or four. The child is not otherwise ill than that it is no longer bright, as it was wont to be, it ceases to gain flesh, it sleeps more than it used to do, though when it wakes it is always eager for the breast, and cries when leaving it, and if the experiment is made of giving it some milk and water immediately on leaving it, it takes that greedily. ”

“ There is one thing very remarkable in the growth of the human body. The fœtus in the womb continues to increase more and more in equal periods, till the birth. The infant, on the contrary, increases less and less, that is in the same period of time, till the age of puberty, to which it seems to bound, as it were, at once. The fœtus, for example, is an inch long in the first month, two inches and a quarter in the second ”

“ The value to be placed on the foetus as potential life is directly related to the stage of its development during gestation. The undeveloped foetus starts out as a newly fertilized ovum; the fully developed foetus emerges ultimately as an infant. A developmental progression takes place between these two extremes and it has a direct bearing on the value of the foetus as potential life. Accordingly, the foetus should be viewed in differential and developmental terms. ”

“ The younger an infant is the more he generally sleeps, so that during the early months he is seldom awake, and then only to take the breast. It may be interesting to a mother to know the average weight of new-born infants. There is a paper on the subject in the Medical Circular and which has been abridged in Braithwaite’s Retrospect of Medicine. ”

“ The Crib.— The infant must have its own crib, without rockers, and it must on no account be put to sleep in the same bed with its mother. In its early life it should never be taken out of its crib except to be fed, to have its clothing changed, or to be bathed. There should be no holding on the lap, no dangling, no carrying or fussing over the new-born infant; and the more the baby is let alone, the better and healthier it will be. If baby cries, look at once to see if it needs a fresh napkin ”

“ It is but too frequently the case that inflammation of some internal organ will occur under such circumstances, without the true source of the disease ever being suspected. Here, however, a frequent error must be guarded against,— that of covering up the infant in its cot with too much clothing throwing over its face the muslin handkerchief—and, last of all, drawing the drapery of the bed closely together. The object is to keep the infant sufficiently warm with pure air ”

“ Therefore, finding an Infant of a notable development of Nose, I would, by the Use of augmentative Ointments, developing Moulds, and other cunning Inventions contrived by myself, so foster the first Effort of Nature that the Infant should, on arriving at Maturity, possess an Organ of a Size equal to its Head, or even of its whole Body. ”

“ If the effects upon the infant should not be so aggravated as those just described, and it subsequently live and thrive, there will be a tendency in such a constitution to scrofula and consumption, to manifest itself at some future period of life, undoubtedly acquired from the parent, and dependent upon the impaired state of her health at the time of its suckling. ”

“ But if she should be no longer competent to suckle, and her infant be delicate, a wet-nurse must be obtained; for, the infant's bowels becoming disordered, medicine or remedies will avail little without healthy breast milk.
The age at which weaning ought to take place must ever depend upon circumstances; the ninth month would not be too early for some, the twelfth would be for others. ”

“ For though a hereditary predisposition undoubtedly renders some individuals more susceptible than others to particular diseases, yet when the bodily organization of an infant is complete, and the degree of vitality which nature gives it is sufficient to propel the machinery of the frame, it can scarcely be regarded as in any other state than that of health. ”

“ If half a grain of a certain drug is the normal dose for an adult, the proper dose of the same drug for a small infant, say, less than a year old, may be about one twenty-fifth of the adult dose. How small, in proportion, should then be the dose given to a cell a billion times as small as the infant? ”

“ Moreover, a physician of wide experience has said that disuse of the mammary gland has a tendency to manifest itself in the next generation when the baby girl in turn becomes a mother, while the reverse is equally true. Impress upon her the fact that the milk is often slow in coming, and that nearly all mothers can, if they persevere and are in fair health, nurse their babies for at least three months, while a full year is better. ”