Connecticut western news., 1902-04-03
FEED BABY SLOWLY.
ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT FAC
 TORS IN CHILD REARING.

Reasons Why Food Should Not Be
 Tumbled Rapidly Into the Little
 stomach-Advice Which Applies to
 Grown Folks as We'll as Babes.
 In the proper bringing up of a child there is nothing absolutely more i'm portant than this one thing-to teach it to eat slowly.
 Every groom knows and observes the rule in the care of horse that rapid eating Is fatal to digestion. There are all sorts of patent managers to prevent the horse swallowing his oats too quickly. The man who has no patent manager knows enough, when neces- sary, to put a stone in the manager, scattering the oats around it, so that the horse may be compelled to eat slowly. If the horses inclination is to gulp down water too fast, the care ful man will put big sponge in the water, compelling slow drinking. A childs appetite, when he Is al- lowed to eat rapidly, Is always in ex- cess of his actual needs unless the child Is in bad health. The reason for this Is extremely simple. The child
 
 to manufacture new tissue. He is growing, and he must not only replace the used up tissues that his daily life destroys, but he must make new flesh, new muscles, new bone and new blood every day, adding weight and size. The sensation of hunger is not the l craving of an empty stomach, satisfied as soon as the stomach is filled; it is a craving that Is felt by the nerves all over the body. This craving cannot possibly be satisfied until the stomach has begun the work of transforming the food into blood, flesh, muscles, etc; consequently the sensation which we call hunger persists long after the child or grown person has rapidly ab- sorbed as much food as it really needs. A million foolish parents urge their children to eat a great deal and always let them eat as much as they want to. Yet all of these know that a famished man taken off a wreck will eat himself to death if allowed to do so. The very hungry child goes to the same excess, only in a lesser degree. The great safeguard against that excess in eat ing, which kills 90 per cent of men be- fore their time and which accounts for 99 per cent of children's diseases, is slow eating.
 Nearly all children eat too rapidly. They do so by nature. Slow eating is a matter of education. But too often the mother or the nurse teaches the child the habit of eating fast. When the baby is little, it is fed one spoonful at time. Before it has time to half chew or even gulp down the first tea spoonful of food another is held to its lips. Of course it swallows what it has in its mouth and seizes upon the next mouthful. The habit thus incul- cated by foolish adults often ruins the child permanently.
 | Four factors count in the healthy as- similation of food, factors which par ents and nurses should remember. As suming the food to be properly prepar- I ed, thoroughly cooked and wisely se lected, there comes, first, the work of easy digestion; second, the action of the saliva, with which the food must be thoroughly mixed in order to mini mize the necessary work of the gastric | juices in the stomach; third, the work of the stomach itself; fourth, and most Important, a proper supply of blood and of heat.
 Force your child to chew slowly and thoroughly every mouthful. If noth- ing else will do, compel him at ire | Quent intervals to lay down his knife | longed chewing may be impressed upon him. Don't allow your child to gulp down water or any other liquid with bis solid food. If you allow him to drink while he eats, the salivary glands will not act. They will not need to act, for he will be able to swal- low his food easily when 1t is made moist by water.
 You can't do anything to help along the unconscious process which goes on in the stomach, but you can do ev- erything to help that process by at- tending to the fourth necessity, which demands blood and the heat of the blood in the stomach. Allow no child after eating to take violent exercise, to study or even to read an exciting book. The brain has first call upon the service of the heart, and as soon as the brain is excited the blood leaves the stomach and goes to the head. The muscles also when too violently ex- erted draw the blood away from the stomach.
 It is absolutely impossible for child or a grown person to digest properly or to get strength and vitality from what he eats unless for at least a half hour after eating the stomach be al- lowed to monopolize the blood supply.
 Children should be kept quiet in some way, especially very young chill I dren, after they have eaten. In the case of very young babies nature at- tends to this mercifully by making them go to sleep as soon as they have absorbed their milk. Older children ought not to go to sleep directly after eating for physiological reasons which may be explained at some other time; but they ought to be quiet and calm. Tens of thousands of children in homes l where this newspaper is read are ruin ed in health by studying right after meals. The public school system which gives children too short rest ing period in the middle of the day is responsible partly for this, and the home studies at night are also respon- sible.
 Every word that Is said here applies to grownup people, of whom not one in a hundred has ever been taught to apply to himself such common sense care as is bestowed on a second class horse. New York Journal
 Good Cheer About Death.
 Let any man be of good cheer about his soul who has ruled his body and delighted in knowledge in this life; who has adorned the soul in her own