The Republican journal. [volume] (Belfast, Me.) 1829-current, 1912-07-25
Jeanette Van Reypen's House
hold Letter.
Babies from the lime of Good Queen
Bess.

Babies from the lime of Good Queen
Bess.
| New YORK, July %, 1912. Consider
ing the prominent place that children
hold in modern publications, it is not a
little surprising to find that they were
seldom mentioned in literature before
the Eighteenth Century, so that DR..
David Forsythe who recently read a
remarkably valuable and interesting
thesis before the Royal Society of Medi-
cine in London, on The History of Infant
Feeding, was obliged to dig among
medical treatises and old family letters
for his facts.
There was only one way to rear an
infant in Elizabeth's day, and mothers
then sucked their children for two or
three years, as savage tribes often do
now. By the Sixteenth Century, how
ever, the professional wet nurse was an
established institution, and she maintain
ed her place until Scientific feeding elm
mated her.
cows MILK IMPOSSIBLE.
In Elizabeth's time, says DR.. For
sythe, there was no question of using
cows milk for children, for condi-
lions in London were so unsanitary that
this readily infected food would have
been rank poison, though there was good
pasturage just beyond the city limits
Furthermore, in those days, both laity
and physicians considered boiled milk
injurious even to adults. One John
Peachy, in quaint treatise published in
1879, advises ''merry wet nurse" and
that child should not be weaned while
'the moon is on the wane," nor until he
has all his teeth.
THE FIRST BOTTLES.
The. first nursing bottles were made
of calf's horn, scraped and polished,
the tip perforated and topped with
piece of leather or parchment shaped
like the finger of glove. When glass
bottles were made they were similar in
form, and the first rubber nipples were
disagreeable to both smell and taste.
1t is not astonishing that these, used
with unmodifed cows milk, proved ex-
ceptionally dangerous devices. "Natu-
rally" says the Doctor, ''the need for
some safer food was pressing. Sage,
Arrowroot, Salep, Biscuits, tops and
bottoms, Gum Arabic, Isinglass and
jellies were tried, but many had short
vogue, their disappearance being hasten
ed by the appearance of the first Pro-
prietory Foods in 1910. DR.. Golding of
Charing Cross Hospital, realizing the
need for safe, inexpensive food, was
responsible for this special preparation,
which was good but not wholly satisfac-
tory, and was followed by no fewer than
twenty-seven brands, many Of them re-
curing the addition of cows milk, and
being thus rendered liable TO infection.
For, says DR.. Forsythe, Experience
has proved that the safest and most
convenient form of food is that of dry
powder soluble in water
The period of weaving has been much
shortened since safe and scientific food
has been easy to obtain, and, as a rule,
the infant is fed once or twice day
with this before the natural food is
abandoned, so that he is used to the
taste, and the change is accomplished
without the prolonged fretting formerly
so distressing to both mother and child.
THE MODERN TREND.
In the light of experience the preju-
dice against artificial feeding is fast dis
appearing among people of intelligence,
and cows milk, which is easily contami-
mated, frequently diseased, and often
tempered with before reaching the in
FAINT, is losing favor, since none of these
disadvantages is easily discovered until
the harm has been done.
1.-THE Patent Foods, on the other
hand," DR.. Forsythe states, "are pre-
pared by scientific methods that prevent
the risk of contamination. They are
never diseased, rarely tempered with,
and usually consistent in composition.
They are, besides, convenient for stor-
age or travelling, retaining the fresh
ness Indefinitely, and can readily be con :
verted into liquid form as required. The
trend of infant feeding in the future,
therefore, appears to lie with the best
scientifically prepared food" and the
wet nurse has become as extinct as the
! Dodo.