Infant diet.

  • Jacobi, A. (Abraham), 1830-1919.
Date:
1874
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Infant diet. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    G5 the nipple, impede tlie process by which the food is obtained. This special form of food, therefore, must be imposed by more genei'al conditions than those of the mouth. It is common to the young of only one class of vertebrated animals—the mammifers. Birds have no tce^h, but from the time they emerge from the egg they are fed upon solid food—even those species which are at first too feeble to feed themselves. In birds, however, as is well known, the trituration of food is effected in the gizzard, and hence requires no voluntary muscular exer- tion such as that involved in mastication. For this exer- tion the young of mammifers, and especially the human young, are too feeble, and this is the first reason why they are provided with'food that does not require it. Those animals which, like calves and colts, rapidly acquire mus- cular force enough to rnn about, begin to browse long before they have given up nursing, and the maternal milk is continued as a luxury long after it has ceased to be the exclusive article of food. But kittens and puppies lie huddled in blind impotence for many days: their mus- cular feebleness approaches that of the human baby, and, like the latter, they remain till a much more advanced age entirely dependent upon milk. The muscular strength seems therefore itself to be proportioned to the deeree to which the animal can digest other substances than those contained in milk. In herbivorous animals destined later to feed upon starchy substances, the greater development