Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 1.djvu/502

488 dyspeptic, the extent of which he probably never dreamed of himself when he uttered it: "Live on a shilling a day, and earn it"

This sentence, translated into the language of the present, in New York, would be to each individual, "Earn a dollar a day and feed yourself with that alone." This would approximate to living healthily—as did our forefathers—though it is impossible for a man of ordinary means to feed himself healthily in New York, because bread is a prime necessity. The greater part of the flour which comes to the market is but little different from pure starch, so thoroughly is it bolted by the miller, so thorough-bred (no play on the words) is the grain itself. The wheat itself has suffered in its nutritious qualities by the extreme care taken in its cultivation. The canary-bird fancier, in his zeal to raise high-colored birds by interbreeding, obtains his buttercup-yellow, but at the cost of a very scanty plumage. The stock-raiser gets his thoroughbred horse with his thin neck, small head, diminutive ears, greyhound legs, and peculiar barrel, but with them a high nervous organization and uncertain temper, that make the animal impracticable for the ordinary pursuits of life. The same state of things is seen in the wheat of the country, which, having first nearly exhausted the unfertilized soil, finishes by being itself exhausted of the nutritious phosphates and nitrogenous elements so necessary for the bone and nervous tissues of the human frame. This is very important, especially for the young, a great portion of whose alimentation comes from bread. Add to this deprivation of essential elements, the substitution of starchy substances capable of but imperfect assimilation by any stomach, especially that of a young child, and we have an important source of animal imperfection and debility.

We find like cause of degeneration if we look at another leading source of the life of children—milk. Dr. Nathan Allen, in his recent elaborate article ("Physical Degeneration,", October, 1870), says that American women are to a great extent incapable of nursing their children, and that they necessarily resort to the bottle and cow's milk. How bad is this substitute, very few have even surmised. We know there is no exaggeration of the ill results from the use of the so-called swill-milk, which, in greater or less quantities, furnishes the chief supply of all our large cities and towns. The present writer made the initial observations on swill-milk, in New York, and his report to the Academy of Medicine was the basis of the subsequent general interest in the subject. This milk is deleterious, because new principles are introduced into the milk, and the normal ones distorted and rendered almost nugatory.

But, setting this matter aside, let us look at the healthy milk of the whole country, and perhaps of the world. What is it?

When a woman, in the vigor of health, while nursing her own child at the breast, becomes again pregnant, her first knowledge of and attention to this fact frequently arise from the effects of her milk upon