Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/705

Rh mother's own infant, which should be seen if possible. And it must be remembered that even hero another imposition may be practiced—a neighbor's baby can be borrowed for the occasion. The flattering testimonials of fidelity and satisfactory conduct in previous positions are often from employers who have departed for Europe or some other quarter of the globe, and are therefore inaccessible. When success has rewarded the search for a wet-nurse, there is no guarantee that her milk will remain satisfactory for any length of time. If she has the true maternal instinct, she mourns for her own child, and it is not long before, deprived of its proper nourishment, it sickens and, more often than not, dies, and the grief of the mother dries up her milk.

The question of artificial feeding becomes, then, one of paramount importance, since the largest proportion of city infants must subsist in this way. In summer it is indeed a difficult task to raise an infant in the city. New York physicians know very well that a large proportion of artificially fed infants who enter the summer months die before the return of cool weather, unless saved by removal to the country.

One of the most benevolent institutions which has been devised is the Floating Hospital of the St. John's Guild of New York, which daily in summer takes its freight of pallid, almost dying, infants, suffering from faulty nutrition, out into the fresh ocean-breezes for the day.

Cow's milk coming from a long distance is unfitted for infant feeding; but, if it can be obtained fresh, it is the best substitute for mother's milk. It must be diluted the first six weeks one half, the next six weeks one third, and after three months a fourth, and at five or six months it can be given pure. The feeding-bottle should be perfectly sweet and clean. It has been found both in private practice and hospital experimentation that milk which has been prepared with the extract of pancreas can be used more successfully than any other. Infants' foods abound in the market, whose inventors claim all sorts of merits for them. For a while one food will prove advantageous, when, having obtained a reputation and come into extensive use, less care is taken in its preparation, and through the suffering of many infants it is proved unworthy of longer confidence. Goat's milk is good for city infants, because it can be obtained fresh, and the animals can be kept by poor people at little expense.

Many an infant suffers from irregularity of feeding and overfeeding. There is in the popular mind but one interpretation of a baby's crying, "It is hungry," and immediately it is given more food to eat, when already its tiny stomach is distended and irritated. Infants' meals should be regulated by the clock. This prescription, unaided