To emphasize not merely a plentiful, but a carefully selected diet for the nursing mother seems almost superfluous. The healthy mother has not only an abundant supply of milk, but a milk of good quality; and such milk for the child no artificial food can replace.

While, of course, there are a number of factors that have an important bearing on the health of the mother, the food factor, taken all in all, is perhaps the most important, and the one most often neglected. Here again the mother's diet should include a plentiful supply of milk - two and three times the quantity that she might ordinarily take - perhaps a quart or so a day. Since milk contains much fluid in proportion to its solid content, a good supplementary diet is the egg. A quart of milk and two or three eggs per day should constitute the principal item in the mother's bill of fare. But with these should come vegetables and fruit in moderation. Meat should certainly not be overemphasized. Take a little if you like it very much, but only a little.

The Infant

You hear so often the remark, "Nothing like a breast-fed baby." This needs some qualification. Unless the mother's milk is excellent in quality, the breast-fed baby may suffer far more than the artificially fed one. But when the mother is in good health, and her milk is therefore of good quality, modern science merely confirms what untold years of experience have taught us: breast milk is superior to all other milk.

Breast Milk

Having been taught that milk, irrespective whether human or cow's, etc., contains the three classes of foodstuffs, the mineral salts, the essential amino-acids and the vitamines, the reader may very naturally ask why breast milk for the infant should be superior to cow's milk? Of course the first answer that comes to mind is that the proportions of constituents in breast and cow's milk are different. Cow's milk contains more protein than mother's milk; the latter, on the other hand, contains more milk sugar. It is indeed customary, whenever the infant is fed on cow's milk, to dilute it and add some milk sugar. In this way you make the proportions of constituents in your modified cow's milk as nearly like to what it is in the mother's milk. But even when that is done there is quite a decided difference. So far as the chemist and the physician can tell, you have the same protein, fat, carbohydrate, mineral salts and vitamines in both kinds of milk. Just what is the difference? We must confess that we do not know. Some physiologists claim that the proteins in the two milks are not quite the same; careful chemical analyses do reveal differences. Perhaps the protein has something to do with it.

Artificial Feeding

Of course, where breast feeding is impossible, or possible but disadvantageous to the child, artificial feeding has to be resorted to. Modern pediatricians no longer do what their predecessors did; they do not risk their reputation on calories alone; nor merely on the proportion of the three foodstuffs to one another. They take into consideration all the various factors that the science.of nutrition has taught them to be important; many of these have been discussed in this book.

"Modified," Dried And Condensed Milk

Even where the infant is deprived of mother's milk, we have every reason to believe that ordinary milk - provided it is not diluted or treated in some special way - contains the three vitamines in sufficient quantity. Where, however, the child receives "modified" milk in one form or another, there it becomes most important to carefully examine such a product for its vitamine content. Codliver oil is a good source of fat-soluble A, and orange juice of water-soluble C.

Should the child receive dried or condensed milk, we must remember that the method of preparation of such milk probably destroys its content of water-soluble C, though we have reasons to believe that the two other vitamines remain fairly active. "In the present state of our knowledge it is our duty to give our infants the best possible chance, and the wise course is to omit no precaution that may ultimately prove to have been necessary. An additional antiscorbutic should therefore be given to infants who are reared on any artificial food other than raw cow's milk. Even in this case, and that of the breast-fed infants, such a course might also prove beneficial." (British Medical Report.)

"The Valve of Milk for the Child. Milk is absolutely essential for the life of infants and very young children.

"It is a most desirable adjunct to the diet of older, rapidly growing children.

"It is the main dietary reliance in cases of disordered digestion or extreme illness.

"Milk contains an abundance of protein, fat, carbohydrate and mineral nutrients, and its proteins are not only of superior value when used alone, but they are especially adapted to supplement the protein deficiencies of the cereals which form so large a part of the daily ration of mankind. Its mineral nutrients also supplement the deficiencies of the cereals, meat, sugar and fats in these important elements. Moreover it contains the three vitamines without which life cannot be maintained.

"The scurvy-preventing vitamine is destroyed by heat, and therefore if infants are fed on pasteurized or sterilized milk the use of orange juice or some vegetable extract is necessary to avoid the possibility of scurvy.

"Whole milk contains enough water-soluble vitamine to meet an infant's requirements, but if 'the top of the bottle' diluted with water is fed, the supply of this essential vitamine may be insufficient unless it is supplemented from some other source.

"Milk is the only food known which is capable of serving as the sole constituent of an adequate ration.

"Milk is a cheaper form of food at 16 cents a quart than either beef at 35 cents a pound or eggs at 35 cents a dozen." (Miss E. L. Ferry.)