Bringing Up By Hand

"Bringing up children by hand" is always fraught with more or less peril to the infant and it demands the closest and most anxious consideration. Cow's milk is the nearest approach to that of the mother's, but cow's milk is only intended for calves, with their four-stomach apparatus, and cannot be used for infants without modification of some kind, in order to make it more nearly approach the mother's milk.

Milk in itself is a perfect and complete food, upon which the young of all mammalian animals, for a time, during their babyhood are fed, and which is proved to contain all that is necessary for supporting and maintaining the growth, development, and activity of the animal body in its highest form. While milk is usually considered a perfect food it is more essentially adapted for the newborn mammal, adults not requiring it at all, or if so it must be modified to suit their requirements.

Only the infant's digestive apparatus is adapted for the proper digestion of milk. This will be the more readily understood when it is known that its alimentary canal is almost a straight tube, quite different from that of the adult. Not only this but the salivary and other glands in an infant are in a more or less undeveloped state.

In earlier infant life there is comparatively little gastric juice secreted by the stomach, which is simply a little bulb in the tube. When milk enters the stomach of an infant it goes easily into the stomach and down into the intestines where it can be digested.

In the stomach of the adult, whose shape may be said to be bag-like, situated crosswise of the body, milk forms large tough curds, undergoing what is called rennet digestion, converting the milk into a cheese-like mass; in fact it is nothing more or less than cheese diluted.

In Approximate Figures

or the same amount of fat, more sugar, and half as much proteids as is contained in cow's milk.

The natural food supply of the infant - mother's milk - forms very small, soft curds, which are easily broken up and digested, differing entirely in this respect from cow's milk, which owing to its containing a large amount of casein, forms curds which are tough, and only adapted to the four-stomach apparatus of the calf. In order that cow's milk may approximate the human, it must be so treated that it shall contain one half its usual amount of proteids, and its sugar increased to almost double. In readjusting these proportions it is found practicable to remove all the fat, dilute the proteids, and then put back the fats in proper proportion, adding the necessary amount of sugar. This is performed by removing the fat, or butter, from fresh new milk by a centrifuge, or churn-separator. This, the proper modification of milk, is carried out in the laboratories of large cities on a large scale. Practically the same results are obtainable at home, as will be described.

In order that milk shall be clean the following essentials must be observed. The cows should be kept in clean stables, well groomed; teats and udders washed before milking; the milker's clothing to be clean; milk pails to be scoured, steamed, and sterilized as far as possible. The perils in the life of milk are in the first ten minutes of the milking. Milk as soon as drawn should be filtered through surgical cotton into clean glass, closely covered, air tight jars, then put on ice or in a cool place.

Milk Absorbs Poisons

Milk not only absorbs bacterial poisons from the air, but it also undergoes other changes, invalidating it for the purpose of human consumption. This is a very important point and one never to be lost sight of.

Milk must always be clean and pure, otherwise it is certain to become a dangerous food to infants. In the warmer weather particularly, to be absolutely sure of good milk it is safest to sterilize it. Sterilizing is quite a different thing to boiling, as will be explained. Sterilizing undoubtedly impoverishes and entirely changes the character of milk. It seems to be trying to make the best of a bad condition of affairs. Nothwithstanding that milk has been known from time immemorial, yet it is but very recently that its constituents have become thoroughly recognized.

It is well known that milk changes rapidly on exposure to the air; germs enter it from the atmosphere and warmth favors their development. The object of sterilisation is to destroy any morbific germs that are likely to gain access to milk. Besides the lactic acid or "souring ferment," the following microbes may get into milk: the bacillus of the green diarrhoea of infants; a bacterium, which is abundant and especially virulent, sets up infectious diarrhoea; the filamentous germ of infantile cholera; the bacillus of typhoid fever, from dilution with impure water, or from the milk of an animal suffering with the disease; and finally the bacillus of tubercle is a possibility.

In addition to its other constituents - casein, fat, sugar, salts, etc. - milk consists of a multitude of cells suspended in serum. The cells are fat cells which form the cream; the remaining cells are nucleated, and of the nature of white blood corpuscles. The serum consists of water, in which are dissolved milk, sugar, and serum albumin, with various salts, and chief of all, casein or cheese. The cells, with the exception of the fat corpuscles, are all living cells, and they retain their vitality for a considerable time after the milk is drawn from the mammary gland.