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Page 27
By this time I do not doubt our baby has your heartiest pity, and you are
saying, "What! no snacks? no cooky nor cake nor candy? no running to aunt
or grandmother or tender-hearted cook for goodies? If that must be so,
half the pleasure of childhood is lost."
Perhaps; but suppose that with that pleasure some other things are also
lost. Suppose our baby to have begun life with a nervous, irritable,
sensitive organization, keenly alive to pain, and this hard regimen to
have covered these nerves with firm flesh, and filled the veins with
clean, healthy blood. Suppose headache is unknown, and loss of appetite,
and a bad taste in the mouth, and all the evils we know so well; and that
work and play are easy, and food of the simplest eaten with solid
satisfaction. The child would choose the pleasant taste, and let health
go, naturally; for a child has small reason, and life must be ordered for
it. But if the mother or father has no sense or understanding of the laws
of food, it is useless to hope for the wholesome results that under the
diet of our baby are sure to follow.
By seven some going to school has begun; and from this time on the diet,
while of the same general character, may vary more from day to day. Habits
of life are fixed during this time; and even if parents dislike certain
articles of food themselves, it is well to give no sign, but as far as
possible, accustom the child to eat any wholesome food. We are a wandering
people, and sooner or later are very likely to have circumnavigated the
globe, at least in part. Our baby must have no antipathies, but every good
thing given by Nature shall at least be tolerated. "I never eat this," or
"I never eat that," is a formula that no educated person has a right to
use save when some food actually hurtful or to which he has a natural
repulsion is presented to him. Certain articles of diet are often
strangely and unaccountably harmful to some. Oysters are an almost deadly
poison to certain constitutions; milk to others. Cheese has produced the
same effect, and even strawberries; yet all these are luxuries to the
ordinary stomach.
Usually the thing to guard against most carefully is gluttony, so far as
boys are concerned. With girls the tendency often is to eat far too
little. A false delicacy, a feeling that paleness and fragility are
beautiful and feminine, inclines the young girl often to eat less than she
desires; and the stomach accustoms itself to the insufficient supply, till
the reception of a reasonable meal is an impossibility. Or if they eat
improper food (hot breads and much fat and sweets), the same result
follows. Digestion, or rather assimilation, is impossible; and pasty face
and lusterless eyes become the rule. A greedy woman is the exception; and
yet all schoolgirls know the temptation to over-eating produced by a box
of goodies from home, or the stronger temptation, after a school-term has
ended, to ravage all cake-boxes and preserve-jars. Then comes the pill or
powder, and the habit of going to them for a relief which if no excess had
been committed, would have been unnecessary. Patent medicines are the
natural sequence of unwholesome food, and both are outrages on
common-sense.
We will take it for granted, then, that our baby has come to boyhood and
youth in blissful ignorance of their names or natures. But as we are not
in the least certain what personal tastes he may have developed, or what
form his life-work is to take,--whether professional or mercantile or
artisan in one of the many trades,--we can now only give the regimen best
adapted for each.
Supposing his tastes to be scholarly, and a college and professional
career to be chosen, the time has come for slight changes in the system of
diet,--very slight, however. It has become a popular saying among thinkers
upon these questions, "Without phosphorus, no thinking;" and like all
arbitrary utterances it has done more harm than good. The amount of
phosphorus passing through the system bears no relation whatever to the
intensity of thought. "A captive lion," to quote from Dr. Chambers, one of
the most distinguished living authorities on diet, "a leopard, or hare,
which can have wonderfully little to think about, assimilates and parts
with a greater quantity of phosphorus than a professor of chemistry
working hard in his laboratory; while a beaver, who always seems to be
contriving something, excretes so little phosphorus that chemical analysis
cannot detect it."
Phosphatic salts are demanded, but so are other salts, fat, and water;
and the dietaries that order students to live upon fish, eggs, and
oysters, because they are rich in phosphorus, without which the brain
starves, err just so far as they make this the sole reason,--the real
reason being that these articles are all easily digested, and that the
student, leading an inactive muscular life, does not require the heavy,
hearty food of the laborer.
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