Excessive infant-mortality : how can it be stayed? : a paper contributed to the National Social Science Association, (London meeting) : to which is added a short paper, reprinted from the Lancet, on infant-alimentation, or artificial feeding, as a substitute for breast-milk, considered in its physical and social aspects / by M.A. Baines.

  • Baines, Mary Anne.
Date:
[1862]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Excessive infant-mortality : how can it be stayed? : a paper contributed to the National Social Science Association, (London meeting) : to which is added a short paper, reprinted from the Lancet, on infant-alimentation, or artificial feeding, as a substitute for breast-milk, considered in its physical and social aspects / by M.A. Baines. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    18/20 (page 18)
    of swimming, plunge into the water, and are drowned, I am strongly eonvinced that it is not so much the kind of food that kills as the ignorant manner in which food given to infants is prepared and administered. There are two extremes prevalent, both equally to be deprecated,—namely, the excessive use of farinaceous food, and its entire prohibition. I consider that to depend wholly upon animal milk is a most disastrous practice, and in many cases induces disorders which, if they do not always terminate fatally, set up a condition which predis- poses to various ailments in more advanced child- hood, and even in later periods of life. These disorders are rarely referred to the true cause, hut are described as “ constitutional,” “ developmental,” and so on; when the truth is that the system, being deprived of the elements in its food necessary for growth and development, suffers from defective nutrition^ and consequently has not power to carry on its processes in a natural and satisfactory manner. It would be curious to know how many of the deaths returned in the registrars’ reports under “ Want of breast-milk,” are those of children who were attempted to be reared (but in effect were starved) upon animal milk alone ; I fancy the numbers would quite equal those of fhe children who die in convulsions from “ over-feeding.” I cannot now enter upon the chemical and physiological arguments which I am prepared to