Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 1.djvu/503

Rh her nursing babe. Sometimes the child grows meagre, pallid, is evidently not thriving; occasionally has spasms from apparent indigestion; at others, it is often nauseated, and ejects the curdled milk, with or without accompanying diarrhoea. The child is withdrawn from the breast, proper food is substituted, and a manifest improvement commences immediately.

There is a similar cause for a depraved condition in all the milk of the country. No sooner is the calf taken from the dam—say, when six weeks old—than she is again impregnated. In the ordinary course of Nature, her milk would "dry up" on the occurrence of this event; but she is regularly milked twice a day, and thus it happens that all the milk upon which our children are raised has been first deprived of its essential ingredients to nourish the next year's calf.

If any one questions the effect of this double attempt at nutrition, let him compare the milk in ordinary use with that of a "farrow" cow. The latter is small in quantity, thick, redundant in cream, dark in color, of a very high flavor, so as to render it quite unpalatable. This is the milk destined to strengthen the bones and invigorate the energies of the young offspring. It is such milk as this, undrained of its essential elements, that the child demands from his mother. It asks for bread, and you give it starch. It asks for milk, and you give it—what?

In the lack of the natural maternal nutriment, as alleged by Nathan Allen and other eminent writers on this and kindred topics, does not the general use of this deteriorated cows' milk for so many years, as a substitute or as a supplement to supply this general deficiency, point to one among the many causes of physical deterioration?

If any evidence is wanted to show the imperfect nutrition of the better classes, it may be found in the frequency of dyspepsia, scrofulous diseases, and deaths from diseases of exhaustion and debility, as contrasted with the general vigor, capacity for prolonged exertion, digestion of immense dinners, excessive drinking, and general deaths from inflammations, plethora, apoplexies, congestions, gout, and the like, which were the main causes of the death of our forefathers.

If it is also noticeable that the mean of life is now shorter than formerly—as we think it is—then it is deducible that, among other causes, imperfect nutrition holds a prominent place.

Now, when we compare the diet of the past with the present, we find to-day evidences of a delicate and finical appetite, and an enfeebled digestion. The name of "the roast-beef of old England" lives almost but in name; for the degenerate Britons and allies seek for the kickshaws, spiced entremets, and flavorous nothings, of still more degenerate nationalities. The vigorous appetites are wanting, and, possibly, the debile gastric juice, arising from a lack of physical exertion and an excess of mental stimulus, may be the active cause of the general physical deterioration so markedly present throughout the civilized world.