Should the mother afford no milk by reason of malformation, or otherwise, the child should be accustomed to the most healthful kind of food from the first. Milk from one animal should be sought. Animals that are fed on corn, hay and fodder, make the best milk in winter; those fed on clover and cured hay, the best in summer. The milk of animals fed mostly on turnips, cabbages, and potatoes, is more apt to disagree with the stomach.
The goat furnishes an even diet for infants, but its milk is not so easy to obtain in large cities.
Milk should be given to a child in its purity, not deprived of the cream or watered. Watering is equal to skimming, and _vice versa_. And when the child has never known the taste of its mother’s milk, I can see no philosophy in directing the milk to be watered and sweetened to make it taste like breast-milk.
All attempts to increase the quantity of babes’ food by watering are indeed robbery, as relates to the infants; such weakening should only be practised for special reasons. But to insure success, pure milk, or cream with some water, should be the rule, not the exception.
In a warm atmosphere the milk or cream should be made scalding hot by setting it in a vessel of boiling water, and stirring it the while. Boiling deprives it of the cream and other nutritive properties. There should be no more warmed than is to be used up. The warming should be by putting the milk in the bottle, then placing the latter in hot water a few minutes. In this way the quality and temperature of the drink remains uniform. The capacity of the bottle selected should be about one ounce. The material of which the black elastic nipple is composed, is not supposed to injure the mouth. No sugar should be added.
Babes have been raised to a fine size on various kinds of porridge; and they can be supported by putting a piece of clean linen into the shape of a teat, fastening a soft string about it so that it may be held by the nurse or any one, while food is poured into it from a spoon. Many are the times that I have fed them in that way. I never thought of laying them down to feed themselves.
Milk may be used just as it comes from the animal; it is only in cases where it is kept on hand for a day that it really need be scalded.