The household medical adviser. A complete, popular-scientific work of reference ... compiled from the most recent recognised system of prevention and cure ... with over 320 illustrations, coloured plates and unfolding anatomical models / by H.Muller. M.D.

  • Müller, H.
Date:
1900
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The household medical adviser. A complete, popular-scientific work of reference ... compiled from the most recent recognised system of prevention and cure ... with over 320 illustrations, coloured plates and unfolding anatomical models / by H.Muller. M.D. 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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    often happened in such places, and can still happen, even under the eye of the law, and notwithstanding all the enactments affecting persons taking charge of infants. These are painful assertions, but unfortunately true : and it is much to be hoped that as the national prosperity increases the higher wages of the father of the family may make it possible for the mother to devote herself more and more to her household duties, and enable her herself to undertake the care and nursing of her children. But is the mother's milk really a nourishment so magnificent, and so impossible to replace, that all this stress is to be laid upon it ? The only possible answer is an emphatic yes. If anyone interested in the question will follow me for a moment into Nature's great economy I will make the superiority of the mother's milk quite evident to him. As is known—or if it is not known, here it is in a few words, man for the construction and maintenance of his organism requires a certain combination of albumen, fat, and hydrocarbon. These three siibstances can to a certain extent supply the place of one another. For example, a man who takes too little albumen can make up for it by taking more fat. Milk contains, besides certain nutritive salts and water, the three substances above named. Thus there are in a hundred ounces: Albumen. Fat. Sugar. Human milk Cow's milk . . Goat's milk . . Ass's milk . . I'O 3-5 2'4 3-8 3-6 3'9 1-6 7-0 4-8 4-4 6-0 The first glance at this table shows us that human milk contains by far the smallest quantity of albumen, and by far the largest quantity of sugar.* That this small percentage of albumen is by far the best for the sucking child is proved by experience. It is certainly possible so to dilute cow's milk with water that the albumen may be reduced to * Here the sugar takes the place of the hydrocarbou, and is iu cfTect a starchless form of them. lyeguminous fruit, bread, potatoes, and all preparatious of meal for children, are starch, coutaiuiug Indrocarbous, and are absolutelj' uufitted for new-born children and sucklings, whose digestive canal, quite peculiarly constituted, cannot digest starch.