Part 58

It is made extensively in Switzerland and America. When sealed air-tight in cans it will keep indefinitely.

Its average composition--a mean of 41 analyses by Prof. Leeds--is as follows:

Water 30.34% Fat 12.10% Milk-sugar 16.62% Cane-sugar 22.26% Albuminoids 16.07% Ash 2.61% ------- Total, 100.00

Owing to the additional sugar it is impossible to dilute it so that the protein and sugar shall approach the standard of human milk.

Children fed with it are plump, but have soft flesh; they are large, but not strong, and lack the power of endurance and resistance to disease. Their teeth come late, and they are very likely to have rickets. This is enough to indicate that it is not a proper food upon which to feed a child exclusively.

Condensed milk is valuable in emergencies or in traveling, and may also be used occasionally when for any reason the milk supply fails. It has the advantage of being free from ferments and easily kept.

There are physicians who recommend the use of condensed milk, and no doubt, compared with the germ-laden, watery fluid called milk, obtainable in the poorer sections of large cities, it is infinitely better. It should always be diluted with at least ten times its bulk of water.

=Preserved Milk.= Preserved milk is milk which has been condensed and canned without the addition of sugar. It would be a valuable food for children were it not that it is expensive, and will keep but a few hours after the can is opened. By sterilizing it in flasks with narrow necks, plugged with cotton, it may be kept as other milk is for an indefinite time. As soon as the can is opened, the contents should be poured into a glass or earthen vessel, for, on exposure of the milk to the air, chemical action takes place with the tin.

=Farinaceous Foods.= There are many farinaceous forms of food prepared for the use of infants and children. Probably the most valuable of them are those made according to the Liebig process. The starch of the grain from which such foods are prepared is, in the process of manufacture, changed into soluble dextrine, or sugar (glucose), by the action of the diastase of malt: the very thing which an infant cannot do.

When we consider that the digestion of starch in the alimentary canal consists of this change into glucose, and that it is effected principally by the saliva and the pancreatic juice, the significance of the value of such foods will be seen.

It is also well to bear in mind that neither of these functions (the secretion of saliva and pancreatic juice) is developed in an infant until it enters the third month of its life, and then but very imperfectly. That alone shows the necessity of excluding all starch from its food up to that age.

Mellin's food and malted milk are prepared according to the Liebig process. In them the starch has been converted into soluble matter by the action of the ferment of malt. It is really a partial predigestion. Mellin's food does not contain milk.

The following analysis of Mellin's food is one made by Professor Fresenius, of Wiesbaden, Germany:

Non-nitrogenous substances soluble in water 69.38% Non-nitrogenous substances insoluble in water 3.18% ------ Total carbohydrates 72.56%

Nitrogenous substances soluble in water 4.69% Nitrogenous substances insoluble in water 5.06% ----- Total albuminoids 9.75%

Total salts, mostly phosphoric acid, carbonic acid, and potassa 4.37% ------ Total moisture 13.32%

Cane sugar, none. Reaction, alkaline.

Comparative analysis of Mellin's food, prepared for use, with that of woman's milk and cow's milk.

Mellin's Woman's Cow's Constituents. Food. Milk. Milk. Fat 2.36% 4.00% 3.30% Albuminoids 2.83% 2.50% 3.50% Carbohydrates 6.81% 6.50% 5.00% Salts and inorganic matter .74% .50% .70% Water 87.26% 86.50% 87.50% Cellulose A trace. -- -- Cane-sugar None. -- -- Starch None. -- --

DR. A. STUTZER, Bonn, Germany.

This analysis shows that Mellin's food bears comparison with milk. It is easily digested, and as an attenuant for milk may be used without harm during the early months of life, but it should not be used to the exclusion of milk for more than a few days at a time, and then only when milk is not retained by the stomach.

Later it is doubtless a valuable addition to the regular daily food of the child.

Malted milk is made from selected grain and desiccated or dried milk. To prepare it for the infant it needs only the addition of water. It is probably one of the best substitutes for milk, but should not be used for any length of time when it is possible to get good milk.

The starch of grains may be converted into dextrine and glucose by the action of heat as well as by the action of diastase, so that when flour is subjected to a certain temperature, and for a certain time, this change is produced.

Nestlé's food, Imperial Granum, Ridge's food, and some others are made very carefully from selected wheat by this process. Nestlé's food contains dried milk.

These foods are all valuable when made into gruel or porridge, but should be used very sparingly under the age of twelve months, and then only as attenuants for milk, not as substitutes for it.

Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi, editor of "Domestic Hygiene of the Child," by Uffelmann (a translation), in speaking of the value of the various preparations of infants' food on the market, says: "There is not the slightest reason to prefer them to milk or its preparations, except that the latter requires more care; and for any intelligent and affectionate mother this reason is quite insufficient.... During the first year the baby is building up tissues and organs that are to last him throughout life; and these will work well or ill according to the degree of perfection and precision of structure which they attain at the beginning. And this depends to an immense extent upon the suitability of the food, not only to be digested, but to be absorbed, and then to be assimilated and organized.

"So mysterious are the properties of the molecules of albumen and fat, when once they have been thrown into the whirl of the living organism, that we must strive to deviate as little as possible from the exact forms given to us in nature, if only because we do not know what remote effects might result from the deviations. If nature provides the albumen of milk and a living fluid, we cannot expect the same results from any other albumen, or from long dead organic matter, as condensed milk."