Feeding Birth to Maturity - ARTIFICIAL FEEDING

Feeding Birth to Maturity


IF NURSING

FIRST TO FOURTH MONTH

    HOW often should a child be fed? This is a question that will continue to be asked as long as children are born, and the answer will vary according to the prejudices, superstitions, and customs of the locality in which they are born. If babies are allowed to rest as they should, without handling and fondling, they may be fed about three times a day for one or two days. A child that is permitted to rest all it can, and has not been injured in childbirth, will probably not awake oftener than three times in twenty-four hours. It is a very silly, foolish thing to awaken a child to put it to the breast. I have found that for the first three or four days after birth the baby will sleep nearly all the time--probably twenty-three and one-half hours out of twenty-four.

    At the beginning of the second week or the end of the fourth or fifth day, the child should be nursed every four hours during the day--at six and ten o'clock in the morning, and at two and six o'clock in the afternoon; absolutely no night feeding.

    After it is a week or so old, it may be fed one-half to one teaspoonful of orange juice and water before the regular ten o'clock nursing time.

    If, between meal times, the child is fretful, or does not seem to be resting well, the nurse should gently turn it from one side to the other, and then let it alone. It should not be taken up. It is not hungry, and it is not thirsty; so why be giving yourself any uneasiness about the child being sick or not being fed often enough?

    How long should a child be nursed? That depends entirely upon how fast the milk comes from the mother's breast. Where the milk flows freely and easily, the child should get all that it needs in from three to five minutes. Where the milk comes hard, the child may have to nurse ten or fifteen minutes. This will have to be found out by watching the child. If it seems to be satisfied in about five minutes, put it away where it cannot be disturbed by having its bed jostled and hearing a lot of noise. The custom is to feed a young child every two hours. Those who are wedded to this belief should watch the stools. When there are any white flakes or minute curds showing in the movements from the bowels, it means that the child is being nursed too often or too long at a time. Cut the amount down. If it is nursing five minutes, cut it down to three minutes. If it is nursing ten minutes, cut it down to five minutes It is a very dangerous thing to continue to feed a child the same amount when evidences of indigestion, such as milk curds, begin to manifest themselves in the bowel movements. If this is attended to early, there will be no danger of constipation, and the indigestion that necessarily will soon follow. It is criminal carelessness to allow anything of this kind to run on until the child is sick. Indigestion has been running on for some time before such symptoms as a feverish condition, vomiting, or diarrhea will show up. When children get to the age where they do not sleep all the time, the hours of feeding should not be changed, if they are being fed every four hours through the day. Increase the length of time of nursing as the child appears to need more nourishment.

    Concerning the feeding, common-sense should enable a mother to increase the amount of nursing as needed by the child as it grows older.

    
FOURTH MONTH TO ONE YEAR

    I do not believe in feeding children very much other than milk in the first twelve months. Those who have normal, healthy mothers should thrive very well for the first year if kept entirely on the mother's milk, plus fruit and vegetable juices. After a child is three months old, it should be taking a feeding of fruit and vegetable juices daily.

    It should have orange juice, or a combination of spinach, tomato, and lettuce juices. The spinach and lettuce should be run through a vegetable-mill, or bruised, and the juice extracted. A teaspoonful of this vegetable juice, with a teaspoonful of orange juice, in four to six teaspoonfuls of water, can be given preceding the ten o'clock feeding. From week to week the amount of vegetable juice is to be increased, and the amount of nursing decreased, until from the fourth or sixth month the child will be taking nothing except fruit and vegetable juices at this time of day. At a year of age, vegetable and fruit pulp may be given. By that time various vegetables can be used--carrots, turnips; in fact, any fresh, succulent vegetables. The standbys, however, are lettuce, tomato, and spinach, with orange juice. In the summer time, during the corn season, a cob of corn can be scraped, and the juice expressed and used with the other vegetable juices.

    Children fed plenty of fruit and vegetable juices, at least once a day, will thrive very much better than children who are kept exclusively on the mother's milk, or fed on cooked cereals. Catarrh, enlarged tonsils, adenoids, gastritis, colds, 'flu'--in fact, all the 'diseases peculiar to children'--are built by the acid of cooked cereals dressed with sugar. Butter, sweet foods, and candy are catarrh-builders; then add to this improper feeding the stupid custom of removing effects (tonsils and adenoids), and continuing the cause, and we have a picture of today's doings.

    Teeth are removed, sinuses drained, and other operations performed, made necessary by feeding baby wrongly; and health is expected to return without removing the cause--wrong living. This is stupidity. Children whose mothers have eaten a large-sized vegetable salad every day during their pregnancy will be better off than children who are born of mothers who eat in the conventional way.

    
WEANING

    If the mother is healthy and giving all the food the child needs, and if the child is showing a wholesome condition, it should continue to nurse until about one year of age. If an ideal child is desired, nothing will be given but the mother's milk, with the exception of about once a day a little orange juice; and this should help keep the child in full health and thriving. I do not mean a big, fat, roly-poly baby; for that does not mean a normal condition. Strong and well proportioned is all that any one should desire a child to be.

    At the beginning of the tenth month, nursing of the breast may be preceded by giving two ounces of 'fifty-fifty'--half milk and half water (one ounce of milk and one ounce of water); then let the baby finish, or satisfy its desire, with the mother's breast. For about a week the above amount of fifty-fifty will be given. Then increase to four ounces of fifty-fifty preceding the breast nursing. This may be continued for two weeks longer. At the beginning of the fourth week increase the fifty-fifty to six ounces. This is to be continued to the beginning of the sixth week, when it may be increased to eight ounces. Continue this amount until the child is one year of age; then use the tables for artificial feeding for that age.

    If the mother's milk begins to fail, as many do the third or fourth month, a mixture in the proportion of about one-third milk and two-thirds water may be given after the child has taken all it can get from the mother's breast. It may have all of the milk-and-water mixture it desires, but the stools should be watched. When white curds appear, it would indicate that a little much of the artificial mixture of milk and water is given. Cut down the proportion of milk in the mixture, using more water than called for, until the curds disappear. Then increase again to the mixture as first given. As the mother's milk appears to decrease, feed according to the schedule outlined for artificial feeding for that age.

    A great many people have the idea that the child should be weaned when menstruation appears. This should not be an arbitrary rule if the mother is normal and the child is normal. If, however, there are symptoms that the child is not thriving, it can be weaned and put on regular schedule for that particular age.

    
ARTIFICIAL FEEDING

FIRST YEAR

    It is unfortunate when mothers cannot nurse their babies for the first year. Many children get a wrong start the first year of life, and are more or less perverted, in a digestive or nutritional way, throughout life. Real mothers should have a care concerning the future of their children and be willing to make almost any personal sacrifice for their good. Mothers who are self-indulgent to the point of gluttony, or sensual in any way should know that they are building a like legacy for their children. Gluttony causes hard labors. Injuries received during hard labors lead to uterine diseases, tumors, cancer, and many derangements calling for surgery, with often negligible benefit. Leaving the mothers out of the question, children are often injured; and many are infected by the mother's milk, caused by the mother's injuries taking an a slight septic inflammation. These are the circumstances that often make artificial feeding of children necessary.

    Modified Milk.--The milk of cows, goats, and mares, 'modified,' is the best substitute for mother's milk. Reduction by adding water is about all the modification that is necessary.

    A healthy, well-cared-for cow--a common cow --is better than the Alderney or Jersey, because the milk of the latter is too fat.

    Care of Milk.--Cleanliness is positively necessary. Keep the milk in clean bottles and on ice. Do not heat it above the body temperature--about 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

    The supply for the whole day's feedings may be prepared in the morning all at one time and kept on ice until used. The mixtures of milk and water should be thoroughly shaken before a portion is taken out to be heated for a feeding.

    At the beginning of the second month, a half to one teaspoon of orange juice and water may be given preceding the 10 a. m. feeding of milk.

    At the beginning of the third month, spinach, tomato, and lettuce may be run through a vegetable-mill or through a coarse sieve. A teaspoonful of this combination vegetable juice and a teaspoonful of orange juice in four to six teaspoonfuls of water may precede the 10 a. m. feeding of milk.

    The fruit and vegetable juice with water preceding 10 a. m. feeding should be increased, and the amount of milk taken should be decreased, until at four to six months the milk should be dropped entirely and only the juices taken at that feeding.

    At one year of age, the vegetable pulp may be taken along with the vegetable and fruit juices.

    The proportions of milk and water should be adhered to as given above, but the two and a half ounces may be gradually increased as the baby shows a desire to take more. As to the rapidity of the increase, that all depends upon the condition of the baby. The best check on the amount to be taken is in watching the stools. If there are any white specks or curds appearing in the stools, the amount of the feed should be cut down; and if that does not bring results, decrease the amount of milk and increase the amount of water until the baby's toleration point is found. Then, as the baby gets back to normal, increase the proportion of milk, and also increase gradually the amount of the feed.

    If the fruit and vegetable juices cause any trouble, drop them and go back to the milk feed entirely; then try it again more diluted, and increase more gradually. There are no cut-and-dried formulas which can be laid down for the care and feeding of babies. General information can be given, but each baby is a law unto itself and must have its particular needs met with proper treatment.

    If all goes well, the three feedings of fifty-fifty, with the one feeding of vegetables and fruits, may be continued through the remainder of the first year.

    Sugar (milk sugar), lime, and cream are added to hydrated milk by most specialists; but I never have, for I do not believe in fattening children. Why? Because there is more sickness among fat, 'ideally healthy' children than among the thin and slender.

    So-called 'undernourished children' are sick children. Most of them once belonged to the fat brigade--King Doc's reserves--which are only brought on un-dress parade for the picture-show camera-man, and strictly for 'health education.'

    Stockmen bring their pick to expositions to show what ideal animals are like; but they never report the mortality. The same is true of the fat-baby shows. There is no report how these little lumps of hydrocarbon fare in the next five years--how many die of 'disease peculiar to' (fat) 'children,' how many are operated upon for enlarged tonsils and adenoids, or what percentage die from tuberculosis, rheumatic diseases, kidney disease, etc., within the next five to twenty years.

    
SECOND YEAR

FIRST SIX MONTHS

    For the first six months of the second year the child should be fed fifty-fifty three times a day, and a vegetable and fruit combination for the fourth meal.

    The fifty-fifty may be given at 6 a. m., 2 p. m., and 6 p. m.; the fruit and vegetable meal at 10 a. m.

    The fifty-fifty is made by combining half warm milk and half hot water. Whole milk should be used, and the fifty-fifty should be prepared fresh for each feeding.

    As to the amount to be given at a feeding, the child should be allowed to take about what is desired, the stools being watched as a guide for overeating. If small white milk curds appear in the bowel movements, it means that more milk is given than can be digested. Change the milk then from fifty-fifty to one-third milk and two-thirds water; until the stools become normal. Then return to the fifty-fifty. If reducing the milk to one-third does not bring results, do not hesitate to reduce it still more, increasing the proportion of water until curds disappear from the stools then return to fifty-fifty.

    At any time when the digestion seems all right, but there is no increase in weight, increase the amount of fifty-fifty given, but do not increase the amount of milk without increasing the amount of water also. Keep the proportion fifty-fifty, milk and water.

    For the vegetable and fruit meal at 10 a. m., the vegetables and fruit may be run through a sieve or vegetable-mill, and both the juice and the fine pulp fed to the child. About all may be given that is desired. There is not so much danger of overfeeding on this food as of overfeeding on milk and heavier foods, although it must be remembered that it is possible to overeat on the most perfect of foods and bring on digestive troubles.

    
SECOND YEAR

LAST SIX MONTHS

    For the last six months of the second year the meals should be cut down to three at the regular times.

    The first meal may consist of fifty-fifty, followed with fruit.

    The second meal may be of fifty-fifty and raw vegetables. For the raw vegetables, any may be used that are desired, such as lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots, etc. They may all be run through a vegetable-mill before serving.

    The third meal should be of fifty-fifty, and followed with cooked vegetables--any of the green vegetables, not including the potato, which is too starchy. A vegetable puree may be given occasionally.

    The child does not need anything in the line of starch until the third year is reached.

    
THIRD YEAR

(TWO YEARS OF AGE)

    The feeding for the third year may be the same through the entire twelve months.

    For the first meal of the day, every other day oatmeal, or any of the cooked cereals, may be cooked to a jelly, and then reduced with water to the consistency of good thick cream or buttermilk. This is to be eaten as slowly as possible with a teaspoon. All desired may be given, followed with orange juice. The alternate days, use thoroughly dried whole-wheat toast in place of the cooked cereal, followed with prunes, baked apple, or orange. Prunes or baked apple may take the place of orange juice.

    For the second meal, fifty-fifty, followed with raw or cooked vegetables.

    The third meal should be the heavy meal. Tender lamb-stew may be followed with a vegetable potpourri and a raw vegetable salad. The potpourri may be made by cutting up four or five vegetables--any except the potato--into coarse pieces, and cooking until tender in just enough water to keep from burning. Season with salt and butter.

    The lamb may be alternated with raw egg beaten up with orange juice or milk, followed with vegetable potpourri and raw vegetable salad.

    If the child is of good weight, it will probably get along better with the meat dinner for the third meal each day. If, however, the child is of light weight, the meat may be used for the third meal of the day about four times a week, and about three times during the week use one of the decidedly starchy foods in place of the meat with the potpourri and raw vegetable salad. The meat and starch dinners may be alternated. For the starchy dinners, a change may be made each day, using either baked potato, corn bread, whole-wheat bread, or rice, etc. The breads should be well dried out, so as to stimulate thorough mastication. They may be eaten with a little butter-- unsalted preferred--and followed with the rest of the meal. Milk may be substituted for meat or egg.

    No Salt or Sugar Has Been Recommended.--I have not prescribed salt or sugar. Why add these condiments, when all children would thrive much better without them? If a salt-and-sugar habit is not developed in childhood, fiends for these life and health abbreviators are not so liable to be evolved after childhood.

    Salt and sugar cause thirst, and thirst causes excess weight in some children and grown people, and poverty of tissue in others. The foundation for lifelong ill-health is often laid in childhood, in which salt and sugar play a large part, and to which rapid eating--failing to chew properly--adds very largely.

    Medical nomenclature has a whole list of diseases peculiar to children. This peculiarity is largely built by feeding them starch with protein.

    Eating milk and starch--milk and cereal or bread--at the same meal is a dietetic error that builds intestinal putrescence.

    Why do I insist on no starch and protein at the same meal? Because I would prevent the 'contagious' diseases 'peculiar to children.' The eruptive diseases will be done away with forever when children are no longer fed starch and meat or milk in the same meal. Intestinal putrefaction is the so-called contagion that is supposed to be the cause of infectious diseases epidemics. This is more fully explained in another chapter.

    If it were not for teaching children table manners by example, they should be fed at a side table, or in a separate room, to keep them from wanting food which they see older people eat, but which is unfit for them.

    
FOURTH YEAR (three years of age ) TO SCHOOL AGE

    Beginning with the fourth year: For breakfast, toasted bread and butter, which must be eaten dry, then follow with fruit; or give fresh fruit and all the milk desired.

    At noon, toasted bread, vegetable soup made without meat or milk, and combination vegetable salad; or fruit salad (apple, orange, grapes), or any combination desired; in winter, the Delicious apple.

    At dinner in the evening, toasted whole-wheat bread, Shredded Wheat, corn bread, or baked potato, with a reasonable amount of unsalted butter; follow with vegetable puree, or vegetable or fruit salad. Prepare the puree as follows: Cook equal parts by weight of spinach, cabbage, carrot, potato, and celery; run through, or rub through, a sieve or fruit-strainer; no dressing is necessary. A puree can be made of any combination of vegetables. Evening meals may vary: corn bread, butter, and salad; baked potatoes, or any toasted or dry bread, and unsalted butter, combination salad, ground or not, no dressing, or a salad of fruit if desired. Vegetables should be cooked tender and made into a puree, or the child may eat the vegetables without making them into a puree.

    Dry or toasted whole-wheat bread should be the regular bread for children. Change occasionally to Shredded Wheat or other dry breads.

    Children must be taught to eat dry breads before eating other foods at a meal, and positively no drinking should be allowed while eating. Americans will become toothless unless they learn to masticate and insalivate the foods, and unless they learn to feed their children in such a manner as not to produce intestinal putrescence, which cultivates 'diseases peculiar to children'; keeping in mind that putrescence is built by feeding starch and protein in the same meal. Putrescence is at the bottom of early breaking-down of the teeth.

    If the child is of good weight, the above starchy dinners may be alternated with a meat meal. Well- cooked lamb-stew, eggs, chicken, or fish, being the lighter meats, are the best for children. The meat should be followed with a large combination salad, and perhaps one cooked vegetable. Use the meat meals for about four nights a week, and the starch dinners for about three nights, where the weight is good. If the child is thin and needs weight, the starch dinners more often would suit better.

    It is generally understood that meat should not be fed to children. This is true when it is taken in the same meal with starch, but the combinations of meat or milk and bread, or cottage or cream cheese and any food made from grains are altogether to blame for any bad results.

    
SCHOOL AGE

    The undernourished child is a bugbear of about all mothers and most doctors. This fear has no foundation in fact, except in famine-stricken countries. In this country, overfeeding and sickness are universal. The fact is that sickness is expected--indeed, looked for--by everybody, and a child that has no sick report up to five years of age is a rarity--a rara avis.

    Parents should know what causes enervation in children and know that an enervated child cannot digest food--any kind of food--as well as when not enervated. A child, when very tired, should not be given hearty food. If possible, it should be sent to bed supperless, or given fruit juice only.

    Children often play too hard, and become nervous, cross, and hysterical. When parents see their children becoming nervous, loud, and boisterous, they should stop their playing and have them lie down until rested.

    All the so-called epidemic diseases of children affect only those with a cultivated gastro-intestinal irritability, with frequent flares of indigestion--'catarrhal fevers.' At the risk of springing an Irish bull, I will say that a child who is well will not be sick. A well-cared-for child--one free from petty indigestions--is free from enlarged tonsils, adenoids, etc.

    Children should be fed three times a day, but they should not be urged to eat. When fussy for food at off hours, if they cannot take a piece of dry bread and eat it with a relish, they have appetite, not hunger. Clamoring for food, with no desire for plain, wholesome foods, is an indication of a morbid state--food-drunkenness--and should be corrected by withholding all food until a relish for plain food returns. Unless such strenuous measures are adopted, with children or grown people, disease of a serious nature will develop.

     Children returning from school clamoring for food may be given an apple or orange.

    Rapid eating, with insufficient chewing, must lead to digestive derangements. This is one of our national bad habits.

    As soon as teeth are developed, a child should be taught to masticate well.

    Several years ago I went on record as opposing the eating of starch (bread and cereals) and fruit together, because I observed fermentation frequently following that combination. I have since learned that the fermentation was caused by the milk that is almost invariably fed with bread, and insufficient insalivation, and by fresh bread and milk in combinations.

    Breakfast.--Some form of starch such as toasted whole- wheat bread or Shredded Wheat, followed with fresh or sweet dried fruits. The bread should be well dried out and then toasted. Eat the starch first. Swallowing of starch should be delayed until the starch begins to turn sweet in the mouth, which it will do if the butter is unsalted and the bread carries but little. Those who would know when starch turns to sugar should demand bread and butter without salt. No one can insalivate moist or fresh bread as much as is necessary to insure the perfect digestion of starch; hence only dry or toasted bread should be eaten, and without salt in the bread and butter.

    Occasionally a cereal may be taken in the winter time, dressed with a little butter and salt. The cereal should be cooked to a jelly. But only children in the best of health should be allowed this food, and then they should be taught to hold the cereal in the mouth long enough to mix it thoroughly with saliva before swallowing.

    When the starch is all finished, fruit may be taken. Avoid the tart fruits where there is a sensitive state of the stomach. In winter time, use the Delicious apple or winter pear. When fresh fruit cannot be had, use dried prunes and pears, soaked over night, not cooked.

    The black fig is a fine winter fruit food. In the summer time, fresh or cooked fruit (not too acid) may be eaten. Uncooked apples, or any cooked fruit, may be served. Occasionally baked apple may be given in place of uncooked fruit. When the meal is finished, teakettle tea, as much as desired, may be given. Cream and hot water (teakettle tea) after starch meals; milk and hot water (fifty-fifty) after fruit and cottage cheese or milk meals.

    Lunch.--For lunch, toast and butter, as recommended for breakfast. Follow with a vegetable soup and salad. For children under seven years of age, the vegetables may be run through a vegetable-mill. The salad may be dressed with oil and lemon, or not, at the pleasure of the child. If no oil is used on the salad, more butter may be used on the toast.

    Dinner.--Vegetable soup or puree, baked apple, prunes, or any cooked fruit, dressed with fifty-fifty milk and cream. Follow with as much fiftyfifty (milk and water) as the child wants.

    If possible, feed children toasted bread that has been made without salt. Much bread contains a disagreeable amount of salt for even grown people who masticate and insalivate as they should. Bolting food enables many people to eat bread so briny that it would be rejected if properly masticated. The popular craze for candy would be ameliorated if everyone would masticate and insalivate starch as he should.

    Children should be taught correct eating habits. Those who eat with the usual 'limited express' speed will never know how much more bread they consume than they need. Such children should learn perfect mastication and insalivation. 'As a twig is bent, the tree is inclined'; hence the child should be taught to masticate. Ingrown habits are seldom, if ever, eradicated.

    For children that are robust, full of 'pep,' and carrying good weight, the above dinners are sufficient. Where a child is lacking in 'pep,' and also in weight, the evening meal may be a little more substantial. Use meat one night and some form of starch the next, with a combination salad and one cooked vegetable. The lighter forms of meat should be used, such a lamb, chicken, fish, or eggs. The starches should be of the dry form most of the time, so as to produce thorough mastication. Occasionally baked potato, rice, or macaroni may be used. It is usually necessary, when the soft starches are used, constantly to insist on thorough mastication, in order to bring about the proper mixture of the starch with saliva in the mouth and prevent fermentation from taking place.

    
BREAD AND MILK FOR CHILDREN
NOT AN IDEAL FOOD--OFTEN A POISON

    Bread and milk eaten together is a dietetic error; for it is eating starch and protein together. When we go to nature for our food, we may eat her compounds of starch and protein with impunity; for her compounds are blends of starch and protein, plus palpable and impalpable digestive elements, the latter securing or insuring perfect digestion. But when nature's food is analyzed and synthesized in our laboratories and kitchens, the aids to digestion are lost. Then, when eaten, indigestion follows.

    Almost daily someone calls my attention to inconsistencies in my writings, saying that I have changed my opinion on many things; that my present writings nullify and make void much that is in books and magazines which I have written before. Yes, I am moving on, and I intend to make my present work obsolete, if possible. No one knows this better than I do! but since when has it become a crime to grow, to move on? People who are consistent are not growing. I would rather retire from the practice of my profession than be compelled to give up the use of the discoveries I have made in the past two years. My book, 'Toxemia Explained,' boils down and abridges much that has gone before, and the Cook Book gives my latest views regarding food and food combinations.

    I have taught the error of eating meat and bread together for a number of years, but I have not until recently made the rule apply to all protein foods and starches. The 'Cook Book' gives but few menus containing starch and milk. This will cause a mild storm of protest from many ex-patients, old and new readers. Some, no doubt, will turn to other health teachers in their pique; but they will wabble back in time. The majority will pursue the even tenor of their way and continue milk or fifty-fifty with starch, declaring the old teaching good enough for them. The old, moss-grown antediluvians, with their protest that 'what was good enough for my sires is good enough for me,' will be heard; for they are in at every food reform, and they will be heard on every hand declaring: 'Bread and milk have been eaten always; bread and milk have been eaten together since bread has been made and cows have been milked.' Yes, and diseases that are built by starch and protein continue to fill hospitals.

    Milk, when not tinkered with, is a perfect food, containing all the elements necessary for bodybuilding, and is digested by the mouth and stomach secretions. Starch is digested by the mouth secretions. When the two are eaten together, the starch ferments, acid forms, and catarrh is built. All so-called diseases begin with catarrh.

    The human animal is endowed with vitality which, if wisely conserved, may continue its life from one hundred to one hundred and fifty years. From the fact that the average life is not fifty years it is obvious that something is radically wrong in our manner of living, bringing about the assassination of the entire human race every fifty years. If we could guillotine the assassin--the hydra-headed monster whose heads are in continuous consultation, conspiring and evolving new and subtle schemes for inveigling the human family into camouflaged debaucheries, causing disease, premature aging, and death--we could in a few generations have youth and virile manhood coming into its greatest efficiency from seventy-five to one hundred and twenty-five years of age. The sensualism taught by this old hydra is made plausible to minds befogged by the drunkenness of sensualism, when assured that disease is the will of God and unavoidable, and attacks the ascetic as well as the indulgent. Besides, apprehension is assuaged by the great Science of Medicine, assuring immunity to all who submit to being immunized in time!

    Disease is the sequence of wrong eating and sensualism-- overindulgence and pleasure-madness.

    The commonest form of overindulgence is in eating, which develops, sooner or later, a sensitization--a systemic antipathy or aversion--to some particular kind of food. For example The excessive use of bread and milk, or bread and meat, in enervated and toxemic subjects, brings on a catarrhal state of the mucous membranes. In children this state is marked by frequent colds and catarrhal fevers. All the so-called diseases of childhood, including the eruptive fevers, are variations of one and the same 'disease.'

    If children were never overfed, or fed when enervated, tired, or emotionally excited, they would be able to digest milk and bread together; but this is an ideal, the carrying out of which is possible, but not probable. Hence, to insure better health, and avoid putrescent infection contingent on eating starch and protein together, children should be given toasted whole-wheat bread, and instructed in perfect mastication and insalivation. When the bread is eaten, it may be followed with fruit, or teakettle tea made of cream and hot water, not milk and hot water.

    Milk has been the subject of more controversy than any other food. The hue and cry of public health officers has been 'pure milk--milk free from germs--milk from healthy cows,' etc., etc. Cleanliness is certainly next to godliness--and far ahead of most godliness; but there is a world of knowledge that enters not into the calculations of the genial host of the laborator--namely, what is the digestive capacity of the child that is to be fed pure milk? If fed too much, the milk will ferment; for every child's digestive apparatus contains bacteria, and if fed beyond its capacity with certified milk, pasteurized milk, or milk passed by censors of high or low degree, it will decompose, without apologies to the highest tribunal of milk inspectors on earth. And, when it does, it is as disease-producing as the vilest of the vile. The food inspector's jurisdiction ends at the mouth of the baby, and with the teeth, adenoids, tonsils, and immunization of school children; but when adenoids and enlarged tonsils arrest the attention of the doctor, who is an ally of the public health and pure food commission, it is long after pure milk has been regularly fed into a seething gehenna of fermentation beneath the diaphragm of the child.

    Fermentation from starch and decomposition from protein--milk--establish gastric catarrh; which means that the mucous membrane of the throat and stomach has become the seat of vicarious elimination of toxin, which fails to be eliminated in the regular way. Those crises of Toxemia are diagnosed tonsilitis or gastritis; and when there is much putrescence from the protein of the milk or other animal food, the type of sore throat will be ulcerative or diphtheritic. Scarlet fever, measles, and whooping-cough are varying types of a few of the symptom-complexes or so-called 'diseases peculiar to children,' but which are basically Toxemia--the first, last and only specific disease that animal life is heir to. All other so-called diseases are crises or systemic revolts, in which toxin is vicariously expelled from the body, and along with it any extraneous toxic or infectious material that may have fortuitously gained entrance.

    Bread is cheap, and, to encourage its consumption by everybody, it has been dubbed 'the staff of life.' White flour has received the condemnation of dietists of high and low degree; and, if it were not for its intrinsic merits, it would have been consigned to the limbo of oblivion long ago. White flour has better keeping qualities--it remains in status quo much longer than the flours made from whole grain, because it is freed, in bolting of extraneous elements that force degeneration. If millers could clean wheat--remove parasites, smut, and fungi--whole-grain flours would keep equally well with white flour.

    People with full digestive power can protect themselves from a large intake of fungi, but there is a limit to even the most robust digestions. Large bread-consumers come to the end of their toleration, marked by digestive derangements; and there is no cure except to limit the amount to within their toleration. Nerve-energy must be equal to the demand required to keep elimination equal to disintegration of tissue, if not, this toxic waste is retained, bringing on Toxemia--the foundation of all so-called diseases.

    When the system is continually taxed by endeavoring to overcome ferments of all kinds--all kinds of stimulants, from bread, alcohol, tobacco, coffee, tea, and food excesses--energy is used up, enervation checks elimination, and Toxemia results. Then all kinds of symptom-complexes so-called diseases--become imminent. What the type will be depends upon what organs or tissues are stressed most from habits and environments. Stomach derangements follow abuse to this organ.

    When bread and milk are eaten together, the organism has two enemies to resist. (Food eaten to excess becomes an enemy.) If an excess of bread is eaten, and fresh fruit and vegetables follow, the latter helps the digestion of the starch by opposing fermentation. If milk is taken with the starch, both ferment, and catarrh follows. Milk, when not tampered with by pasteurization, and the cow not being poisoned by vaccination, has per se self-protection--resistance to fermentation; but when starch is added, it ferments easily. But fresh fruit and vegetables (uncooked) taken with milk help its digestion.

    Delicate men, women, and children are continually suffering from periodic attacks of indigestion brought on from eating bread beyond their toleration. The whole grain carries a digestant which, if not ruined in cooking, will aid the mouth secretions in its digestion. If milk is taken, it stimulates gastric secretion, which is acid, and the mouth secretion is alkaline. One neutralizes the other, leaving the bread and milk to take on a pathological fermentation instead of a physiological fermentation, and indigestion and catarrh follow.

    Most people remember that when they were children and asked for more chicken, meat, fish or eggs, they were told: 'No, you cannot have more unless you eat bread with it.' Natural hunger calls for one food--a mono-diet; but mixing food has been taught, and bread, the staff of life, has been urged, and even forced. Today, in restaurants, the bread supplied is a gluttonous amount, while other foods are served in such frugal portions that people are forced to eat bread or leave the table with appetite unsatisfied. Hunger and appetite are not the same. Appetite is built by overeating.

    
LOST APPETITE

    There are very few subjects talked more about, and about which there is less known, than feeding of children--malnourishment, loss of appetite, underweight, etc., etc.

    Medical science generally is now guessing that vitamines have all to do with the nutrition of children. The vitamine insanity will follow the insanity on calories and ductless glands to death unwept and unsung. A few absolutely solid facts concerning the cause of disease in children will stop this everlasting search to find the cause of malnutrition.

    It seems impossible for the medical mind to grasp one great, big, prominent fact about the disease of children, and that is that a child can eat too much, and that when it eats too much it loses its appetite. If the child were permitted to go without food until a demand was made by natural hunger, and if it were then fed plain, wholesome food, with very little of the palate-ticklers, it would not be long before full health would be established.

    Someone was kind enough to send me a clipping entitled 'Cause of Lost Appetite.' The article starts out by saying: 'Parents with offspring that have to be forced to eat will be glad to know that scientists are on the trail of the reasons back of lack of appetite.' I do not care who the individual is who wrote that sentence; if he could possibly know the amount of stupidity that will give birth to such stuff, I do not believe he would have the nerve to undertake to teach the public health. In the first place, parents are fools, and made fools of by the average doctor, when they force children to eat. No one should be forced to eat. No good ever comes from it, and many children are made invalids by being importuned by mothers egged on by doctors.

    The best possible remedy for lost appetite in a child is to keep food away from it until a real desire returns; then such a child will eat with a relish any of the staple foods. With the majority of people, when they undertake to coax a child to eat, the food offered is almost invariably unsuitable--in fact, the worst selection possible out of a dietary that has brought on the child's ill-health and loss of appetite, and of a character that is inclined to disturb the stomach and increase the child's ill-health, rather than to benefit it.

    There is just one constant cause of lost appetite, and that is enervation, causing Toxemia. Overeating, imprudent eating, wrong food combinations, pushed to the point of satiety, are auxiliary causes. There is just one way to get away from this terrible affliction of lost appetite, and that is to go without food until the tongue is clean, the breath sweet, and the patient shows in every movement that health is restored. Many children are brought to me suffering with petit mal. What is the matter with them? Very few of them have a normal hunger. They all have appetite. They will eat something that is not fit for them to eat, and perhaps only nibble at that. Such cases I put to bed, and they are given no food until they have all the appearance of health. Then they are fed very little for perhaps a week, and the food is usually a little fruit, with raw-vegetable salads. As improvement takes place, hunger returns. A reasonable amount of whole-wheat bread is then added to the dietary, a few well-cooked vegetables, and later on milk; still later on, an egg or a very little meat once or twice a week. When I get through with these children, they will eat 'out of your hand,' and they will eat anything. It does not take an X-ray to find out whether they are sick; for health is pictured upon their countenances and upon the use they make of their bodies.