Ripe Cheese

Cheese is popularly regarded as a food difficult of digestion, but this has doubtless been much exaggerated. Unquestionably cheese is a very rich food and must not be used in excess, and should be used fresh, if at all. Usually consumed at the end of a meal, when the stomach is already filled with food, good digestion of it could hardly be expected. There is one very important point to be remembered by those who eat cheese : Cheese undergoes what is termed the ripening process. This ripening or fermentative process may go on to actual putrefaction, and even poisonous ptomaines may be developed.

Vegetable organisms of mould may also appear in cheese as well as the cheese mite or skipper. Skippers are the larvae, or maggots, of a spaces of fly, which deposits its eggs in the cheese where they find a home until they are matured. The skippers, or cheese maggots, are certainly not so dangerous to life as the ptomaines and toxins. Cheese is a questionable article of diet. Fresh cheese in moderate quantity might be permissible under certain circumstances; but old cheese, never, unless one cares little whether he runs the risk of an attack of appendicitis, enteritis, or ptomaine poisoning.

In general it may be said that cheese as an article of food is best left alone by the majority of individuals.

Milk Products

Milk Dietetics. Infant Feeding

"Oh, Milk and Water : Ye happy mixture of more happy days '."

- Byron.

THE feeding of infants is a matter of supreme importance, yet one which is little understood, strange as it may appear. It is the first thing with which every mother should familiarize herself. Once this is mastered all else is comparatively plain sailing. Where possible every mother should nurse her own baby, and where circumstances prevent it, the best substitute is undoubtedly a wet nurse. No mother should nurse her child who is suffering from disease of any kind, or whose health is below par, or where the supply of milk is poor and scanty, or when pregnant. A mother suffering from indigestion, irrit-ability, nervousness, or any one of a dozen other minor ailments is likely to have always a fretful or crying child. Nor is the hysteric milk of an overworked society bride calculated to produce an athletic baby. Hence the health of a nursing mother is a matter of prime importance, and one deserving of the greatest consideration for both mother and child's welfare. "Like mother, like child."

Immunity

Mothers generally do not seem to be conversant with the fact that breast milk conveys through its serum a certain immunity to disease, so that it is a rarity for the breastfed infant to take an infectious disease. It is therefore easy to see that nature is very kind and will repay the mother not only by nourishing her baby, but by protecting it from the attacks of disease.

Let the mothers of to-day realize more fully their duty toward the babies entrusted to their care, and the problem of infant feeding will be largely solved.

First, last, and always, the mother's milk, if the mother be healthy, is the food to give the child. Artificial food can never quite replace Nature's supply.

A point never to be forgotten by the nursing mother is that her own health directly influences that of her suckling infant. For this reason women or emotional temperament should exercise great control of themselves during the nursing period. Anger, grief, and worry in the mother are distincty reflected in their injurious effects upon the infant,

The mother, when nursing, should be careful of her own diet, and should avoid anything that is indigestible or that disagrees with her. Immoderate tea-drinking on the part of the mother is always a cause of "wind colic" in the child. Late hours and heated rooms, worry and other mental influences will injuriously effect the milk. A constipated mother means a constipated child, and treatment should be directed to the mother rather than to the child. Fresh air, sunshine, a good nutritious diet of brown bread, zweiback, eggs, nuts, fruits, cereals, and if meat be included in the dietary, let it be chicken or turkey; all, combined with a calm and even life, will place the mother in a proper position to nourish her off-spring, and rear healthy children.

Most people live on two or three meals a day; many mothers think babies should have twenty or thirty meals a day. No wonder babies have indigestion and wind colic, don't thrive well, keeping everybody awake during the night hours.

An infant's stomach is very small, and can contain only a small quantity of food at a time. One portion of milk must be digested before another is given, thus allowing the stomach to get a little rest. If it becomes over crowded the contents are rejected and the child vomits; or, if the food is not disposed of in this way, the stomach becomes distended, the food lies undigested and the bowels become disordered. A new born baby, unless very delicate, does not require to be fed oftener than every two hours. As it gets older the time should be extended to two and a half, and then to three hours or longer. As few meals as possible should be the rule. Over feeding must be avoided, for the oftener the baby gets the bottle or breast, the oftener it cries for it, owing to the fact that the child is uncomfortable and in pain from indigestion; not that it is hungry, though it may appear quite ravenous. Over-fed babies often times seem almost starved to death. It is the quantity assimilated that nourishes the child, and not the quantity swallowed. Children are notoriously, in fact atrociously, over-fed, proof of which is afforded when it is remembered that one-fifth of the children born, die before the age of one year, and one-half of them die before the age of five years. Truly a slaughter of the innocents!

Another of the very apparent results of overfeeding is to be seen in the eruptions, boils, pimples, scald head, etc., so commonly observed in children. This is the plainest possible evidence of overfeeding. Contrast the skin of the young of animals, sleek and without a pimple; while the young child in many instances is literally a mass of pimples and sores.

The rule should be, let the infant take almost as much as it can at one time, then let a proper interval elapse before another draught is given. It is surprising how knowing babies become if fed every half hour or so, and it is almost impossible to break them off the habit; while on the other hand, if the child is fed every two hours it will become, after a short time, quite contented to wait the accustomed time, say every two hours, and during the night every three hours for the first two or three months of its life; after that feed it every three hours in the day, and every four hours at night. A few teaspoonfuls of boiled water, cooled, should be given to an infant several times a day. A child often cries from thirst instead of hunger.

A little trouble on the part of the mother will often suffice and quiet the child, and so tide it over until its proper feeding time. Never give a new born child castor oil or butter and sugar or other material as a purgative. The mother's first milk will do all that is required.