Farmers' Week in Agricultural College. ■ 247 



of all, as will be shown in the latter part of this paper, we find the 

 nutritive constituents in human milk both qualitatively and quantita- 

 tively adapted to the needs of the child. If for any reason this is not 

 true the mother can in most cases, by careful adjustment of her habits 

 and food, so change the composition of the milk so as to make it more 

 nearly what the child needs. Secondly, the milk is delivered to the child 

 at the proper temperature and, if the mother is healthy, sterile. The 

 advantage of this, over cow's milk, is obvious. The growing tendency of 

 mothers not to nurse their infants is criminal. In some cases there are 

 definite reasons why this cannot be, bat in others they are not more 

 definite than those expressed by two women in entirely different walks 

 of life. One, a negro woman, expressed by saying, "Talbot 'her six 

 months old boy) would haf 'ter shift fer hissef when she left the 

 hospittle." She was going to wean him and leave him at home (prob- 

 ably tied in bed), alone with a bottle Of milk from eight to six o'clock 

 every day, because by so doing she could earn more money. Another, a 

 white woman, came with the request that the baby be put on milk 

 formula, as when she nursed him she was obliged to be there every two 

 or three hours, and that was not always convenient. Let us first of 

 all, then, teach our women the importance of breast feeding, and give 

 them such ideals that they will nourish their own infants whenever 

 possible and not cast them aside for some petty reason. 



But suppose the child must be artificially fed, what are the princi- 

 ples which must guide us? Before tracing out the development of the 

 principles of infant feeding, let us emphasize one point — that is, babies 

 cannot be fed by rule. We are dealing with individuals. We can be 

 guided by certain definite principles but these principles must be 

 adapted to the individual cases. 



Let us trace now the development of some of these principles. One 

 of the first is the basis of what is known as the per centage method of 

 feeding. Comparing the composition of human milk with that of cows' 

 milk, which is usually substituted for it, we have : 



HUMAN MILK. COW^'S MILK 



Protein 1.50 



(Casein .50) 



(Whey-protein 1.00) 



Fat 4.00 



Sugar 7.00 



Salts 10 



Protein 3.50 



(Casein 2.90) 



(Whey-protein .60) 



Fat 4.00 



Sugar 4.50 



Salts 70 



Water 87-88 Water 86-87 



The differences here are obvious and the first advance in infant 

 feeding had as its aim the modification of cow's milk to make it ap- 

 proximate as nearly as possible human milk. As the protein of cow's* 



