The care of the baby : a manual for mothers and nurses, containing practical directions for the management of infancy and childhood in health and in disease / by J. P. Crozer Griffith.

  • Griffith, J. P. Crozer (John Price Crozer), 1856-1941.
Date:
1903
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The care of the baby : a manual for mothers and nurses, containing practical directions for the management of infancy and childhood in health and in disease / by J. P. Crozer Griffith. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    Apart from the fact that the patent foods are very prone to produce rickets or scurvy, the very best of them are only tolerably successful efforts to simulate mother's milk, and this is no more than we can do ourselves by following formulae given by a physician. A mother who wishes to feel sure that her baby is getting nourishment upon the composition of which she can fairly well depend will prepare her own mixture. In the rare instances in which some individual pecu- liarity exists which renders it advisable that an infant be tried with one of the foods upon the market, the physician in charge, and not the mother or the nurse, should have the selection. He will probably choose one which is free from starch. The mother can very readily and simply, in the following way, satisfy a laudable curiosity regard- ing the presence of starch in any of the foods on the market: Dissolve a portion in hot water, add a few drops of tincture of iodine to a tablespoonful of water, mix a little of this with the dissolved food, and if starch is present a blue color will result. There is one form of prepared food on the market which is scarcely ever admissible—namely, condensed milk. When it is diluted sufficiently to make the pro- teids digestible it contains far too little fat ; and in many cases it is diluted so much that the proportion of pro- teids also is much less than it should be. I have seen so many babies starving on condensed milk that I now rarely give it. It is true that some babies grow fat and are seemingly healthy, but the health is often only ap- parent, and rickets is very liable to result. If food is necessary during the first few days of life, before the secretion of the breast is established, condensed milk may be employed; but even then it offers no special advantage over feeding with a much diluted cow's milk mixture.