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141
and there exist, without doubt, great differences in teaching on the
subject. This may very easily be seen by anyone who cares to spend
an hour or two in a medical library and reads the instructions in a group
of text-books. Diets based on caloric requirements have not been made
sufficiently simple to afford practical help to most practitioners, and the
same drawback attaches to them as to others, that there is no settled
agreement as to what is suitable to include. Even where there is a fairly
general measure of agreement—as, for example, on the amount of milk
still required by a child at the age of a year—the evidence in its support
is not very convincing. There is seldom more to be found than the
statement that "a pint and a half should be continued." In the case of
other foodstuffs, what one forbids another allows. The physiologist seems
content if the protein, fat and carbohydrate content reach a certain total
and are in correct proportions, and cares not in what form it is supplied.
The prices of food and what is available in different markets receive
scarcely any consideration, yet these are matters which play a preponderant
part at infant welfare centres.
The enormous number of children passing under review at these
centres seems to offer an unexampled opportunity for observation on these
points and the chance that something like an agreed plan of diet could
be reached. That the truth of the matter is yet to be sought is suggested
both by the difference in the instructions current, and by the high proportion
of unsatisfactory results which can be seen whatever plan of feeding is
recommended. It is reinforced by another somewhat significant fact;
and that is the deep reluctance shown by many mothers to reveal what
food they are giving their babies, even, and perhaps specially, when the
babies are thriving and growing at the normal rate. Whether from a
polite reluctance to wound our feelings, or for fear of some reprimand,
many interviews at the clinics undoubtedly end without the facts coming
to light at all. When one is fortunate enough to receive their confidence,
details of the food given often differ in the sharpest possible manner from
what is usually accepted as safe and orthodox. Babies who are still,
according to most text-book teaching, at an age when they should be
having Scarcely more than a little prepared starch added to a milk feed,
are found to be eating—and seemingly digesting with ease—such things
as the uncooked fat of meat, slightly cooked meat, liver, conger eel,
kippers, and so forth. So stern is the usual denunciation of these
discoveries that the healthiness of many of the children is commonly
overlooked. Should the consumption of such food be always forbidden?
Or are we, perchance, doing the child an injustice, and are its powers cf