Our Duty to Nourish, Strengthen and Build up Strong Bodies.—Eradicating Inherited Infirmities.—Children Inherit the Permanent States of Their Parents.—The Parents’ Duty to Those Who are not Well Born.—What has Been Accomplished Along These Lines.—The Relation of Babies’ Clothing and Food to Physical Growth.—Unwise Feeding.—The Laws of Nutrition.—The Relation of Food to National Greatness.—The Danger of Overdressing.—Value of Sunshine and Air.—A list of Good Foods.—The Relation of Exercise to Appetite.—Comparative Value of Meat and Vegetables.—Importance of Rest and Sleep.—Regular Sleeping Hours.—Schools and Nervousness in Children.—Many Children are not Properly Nourished.—Food Poorly Prepared and Poorly Served.—The Importance of Hygienic Cooking.—The Cause of Weak Eyes in Children.—Children and Bare Feet.—The Dosing of Children With Nostrums.—The Use of Brandy and Wine in Cooking.
I think it was Dr. J. G. Holland who said, “We derive our best lessons, not from what people say to us, but from what their words make us say to ourselves.” In the wide subject which the heading of this chapter[264] opens, I can only hope to illustrate this truth. Perhaps by starting new lines of thought with some persons, and in others intensifying and making broader lines of thought already entered upon.
Said good George Müller, “My soul I commit to the care of God, following His laws; but my body He has given into my hands, to care for, nourish, and strengthen, that I may build it up into His image.” Could we remember oftener that it was meant to be after His likeness, and the temple for His indwelling, we should be less careless of the trust committed to us. And again, were we the only sufferers from the lack of care and neglect of our bodies, it would matter less, but we are sowing seed that will spring up and bear fruit, “some thirty, some sixty and some an hundredfold,” in the generations to come; and what also of the incalculable harm from our influence upon those about us?
Could we return to the old Spartan time when only the symmetrical, healthy and vigorous were allowed to marry and bear children, our task in body-building for the future would be less difficult; but we have the rubbish accumulated by the mistakes of the body-builders behind us, through the past ages, to clear away as best we can, before we can properly enter upon our present task. As it is, the problem resolves itself into this—to make the most of the material in hand, in rooting out the bad, and culturing the good.
To begin well, the parents must bear in mind, before the baby’s beginning, that the life of the little one will be in great measure determined by what they are, not by what they may hope to be, though even this has its influence. It is a well-known fact in heredity that transient states of body and mind, are not those which are most often entailed upon offspring, but the permanent states and conditions. What the mother eats, what she thinks, what she enjoys, what habits she allows to control her, will shape largely the little life, and make her after task in body-building a difficult, or a comparatively easy one. Given a good foundation, and the superstructure which rises upon it will be solid and enduring, and as beautiful as the architect desires.
Suppose the little one is not well-born, it becomes the duty of the parents to choose its food, its dress, its plays, its surroundings, that they may make good as fast as possible, the defects known to exist in it. To do this[266] most effectively, they will need to counsel often with their medical adviser, and become themselves conversant with the laws of hygienic living.
That very much can be done along these lines is a well attested fact, and is beautifully illustrated in our Foundlings’ Homes, where little ones coming out of all sorts and conditions of society, and many of them with the worst possible heredity, are trained out of the evil ways toward which they incline physically, and into the upward way which makes the perfect man and woman. Therefore we have no reason to be discouraged, if we have not the most perfect model to begin with, but must instead do some molding and trimming off here and there before it stands forth the fair thing we desire.
The baby’s clothing has much to do with its proper development, as already indicated. The food for the best development of the physical nature has also been emphasized, but some further remarks will not be out of place. I pity the little one that is cheated out of its rightful heritage, its mother’s breast. This is a day of bottle-fed babies, to the sorrow of the babies, and the loss to the mother of many hours of sweet comfort comparable with nothing else she may ever[267] have, while the wee thing is taking its life from her breasts, and she is thinking high thoughts of its future and what she shall be to it. The mother who nurses her baby is much to blame, if she does not drink in the sweet lessons which come to her, of moral as well as physical dependence, while the little one hangs upon and nestles in her bosom; and she does not dream of what she misses, if she puts it off without a thought or a care of this, the sweet lessons of cuddling, nursing motherhood.
If the little thing must be bottle-fed, hold it in your arms, as nearly in its natural position as possible, and cuddle it, while you hide as far as may be the ugly, unsympathetic substitute, the nursing-bottle.
Ask many mothers how often they feed their babies, and they will tell you in the sentiment, if not the language of one who said, “Well, once in two or three hours usually, but when it has colic, or is restless it tugs away nearly all the time, day and night, until I am entirely worn out”—and I venture to say, the baby is in the same condition. The rule or no rule, with such mothers, is, when the baby cries feed it, when it frets, feed it; when it wakes, feed it; when it goes to sleep, feed it; when it[268] has colic, feed it more; and when it is really ailing, feed it all the time. How much? Why all it will hold, until it is full to overflowing, and then wonder what ails the baby. Wise mothers smile at the absurdity; but remember you are the enquiring ones who count ignorance in such things a shame, (as you should), and you are of the favored few, while the great army of mothers belong to the other class.
For quantity and quality of food for the baby, we refer the reader to the chapter on The Care of the Baby.
Properly fed and properly dressed babies will need little medicine, even a child born with an hereditary tendency to constipation, can be coaxed out of it by regularity of good habits, and food.
For older children and adult life the common sense and good judgment of the home-keeper must decide the quality of food best suited to their individual families. For a subject which demands so much common sense for all mankind, and wise thinking, less reasonable thought is spent upon it, than upon any other branch of science the world over. Says a late writer, “It is universally known as a fact, although not much considered, that bone and blood, brain and brawn, are[269] directly manufactured from food eaten. It is now beginning to be discovered that for centuries people have not eaten the right foods to make the best bodies. They have been ignorant of the physiological laws of nutrition, of the proper combinations and proportions of essential elements, of the vital importance attaching to such knowledge. They have cultivated artificial and abnormal tastes, sought momentary gratification in eating, and gradually demoralized their natural instincts.” There has been no study made of the development of nations as influenced by its food supply. It would give much food for thought, we have no doubt, and be a cause for surprise that the quality and quantity of food could make so much difference.
Dr. Henderson, in the Popular Science Monthly, says: “When you remember that we are dressed during the whole period of our social life, and that we eat three times every day, eleven hundred times a year, it is astonishing that these very human arts (dressing and eating) have not been brought to greater perfection. Women weep, work, and suffer the same to-day as at the dawn of the race, because they feed the young on forbidden fruit. So the children grow into men[270] and women with curved spines, unshapely, unsymmetrical forms, and damaged brains, to suffer all through life with ills of both body and mind.”
Dr. Dio Lewis was called at one time to see the child of a friend, who “Did not know what was the matter with the dear little girl.” Dr. Lewis looked her over carefully, and then astonished the mother with a request for an entire suit of the child’s clothing. When they were brought to him he took the little one with him, and followed by the curious mother, went out into the flower-garden. He chose for his object lesson, one of the most thrifty and beautiful of the many lovely rosebushes, and dressed it in the child’s clothes; much to the delight of the little girl.
“What are you doing that funny thing for, Dr. Lewis?” she asked. “Why I want to see whether this will grow as you do when it is dressed so finely in your clothes,” said the wise doctor. “Leave it just so until I come again day after to-morrow, and we shall see how it likes it.”
He came and of course found the thrifty bush withered and dying. “Why, what is the matter here?” said the doctor to the little one.
“Why don’t you see, doctor, you have shut out all the sunshine and air, and of course it could not stand it.”
“Of course not, my dear,” said Dr. Lewis, “and no more can you.” Turning to the astonished mother, he said, “Do you see, my friend, what you have been doing for your little girl, and do you now see what is the matter with her? The child can no more live without a proper amount of sunshine and air than can the rosebush. Take off half the clothes she has been wearing, put on lighter and looser things, give her a sun-bath daily in a warm room, and allow her only simple meals at regular hours, put her to bed at seven o’clock every night, and you will hardly know her in six months.”
The advice was followed and the child became healthy and vigorous.
The old text from “The Book,” “as a man thinketh in his heart so is he,” suggests another as true. As a man eateth so is he. “The man who swallows spices, condiments, pickles, or other irritating, hot substances, is almost certain to think irritating, hot thoughts, and to speak hot words.”
Plain, simple food, well cooked and daintily served, will be as happily received by our families, (if they have not been pampered[272] until their tastes are vitiated and bad habits formed), as the multitude of dishes which are called food, but have no right to the name, which are daily set before many growing boys and girls. The temptation into which many mothers fall of concocting, or allowing to be concocted, “fine” dishes with long sounding names, and which are good for little in nutrition, has much to do in creating depraved appetites which are averse to plain, substantial food, which really builds bodies that are worth the having.
We can sympathize heartily with the plain old farmer, whose lament is given in rhyme in a Southern medical journal:
“We have a lot of salad things, with dressing mayonnaise:
In place of oysters, blue points, fricaseed a dozen ways,
And orange roly-poly, float, and peach meringue, alas—
Enough to wreck a stomach that is made of plated brass:
The good old things have passed away in silent, sad retreat,
We’ve a lot of high-falutin things, but nothing much to eat.
And while I never say a word, and always pleasant look,
I have had sore dyspepsy since my daughter learned to cook.”
Well cooked vegetables, bread made from unbolted flour which contains all the nutritive properties, cereals cooked sufficiently, meat—not fried—once a day, plenty of fruit cooked and uncooked, milk and water, should be all that are allowed growing children; and if desserts are given at all, simple puddings, not pie, should be in the dietary.
A story is told of a mother who took her twelve-year-old boy to her physician, complaining that he would eat only those things that he should not have, and that he felt so poorly that she could not get him out to play. The wise doctor advised her to take him out for a ride of two miles each day, and compel him to run behind the carriage on the way home. His food should be bread and milk three times daily, allowing positively nothing else for a month. He should be put to bed every night at eight o’clock, and report to him in a month. A few bread pills completed the prescription. The result seemed marvelous to the mother, and the medicine was “wonderful.”
It is undoubtedly true that as a rule we eat too much, and are surely too much a meat-eating people for the best results. Meat once daily is by the best authorities on the subject, considered sufficient for our needs. It gives[274] nutritive elements in a more concentrated form, but in this very fact the danger lies.
It will be well for us to remember that food effects temperament decidedly, and we need only compare the different temperaments found in flesh eating and herb eating animals to learn the effect a generous meat diet has upon the human family.
I was interested in noticing the dietary of the world’s bicycle champion, for the longest six days’ ride yet made. It consisted of rice, oatmeal, barley, fruit, boiled milk, koumiss, coffee, and no meat. Arab porters, who carry great loads trotting from six in the morning until six in the evening, during one month of the year, are by their religion forbidden to partake of food between sunrise and sunset. Their morning meal is not mentioned, but at eventide they have a moderate meal of wheatmeal porridge mixed with large proportions of butter, or olive oil. “The French inspectors who are in charge of these gangs of porters, declare that during the month of fasting they do better work than at any other time because their strength is not needed for digestion.” These statements only p............