Emma F. Angell Drake

Our Duty to Nourish, Strengthen and Build up Strong Bodies.—Eradicating Inherited Infirmities.—Children Inherit the Permanent States of Their Parents.—The Parents’ Duty to Those Who are not Well Born.—What has Been Accomplished Along These Lines.—The Relation of Babies’ Clothing and Food to Physical Growth.—Unwise Feeding.—The Laws of Nutrition.—The Relation of Food to National Greatness.—The Danger of Overdressing.—Value of Sunshine and Air.—A list of Good Foods.—The Relation of Exercise to Appetite.—Comparative Value of Meat and Vegetables.—Importance of Rest and Sleep.—Regular Sleeping Hours.—Schools and Nervousness in Children.—Many Children are not Properly Nourished.—Food Poorly Prepared and Poorly Served.—The Importance of Hygienic Cooking.—The Cause of Weak Eyes in Children.—Children and Bare Feet.—The Dosing of Children With Nostrums.—The Use of Brandy and Wine in Cooking.

I think it was Dr. J. G. Holland who said, “We derive our best lessons, not from what people say to us, but from what their words make us say to ourselves.” In the wide subject which the heading of this chapter opens, I can only hope to illustrate this truth. Perhaps by starting new lines of thought with some persons, and in others intensifying and making broader lines of thought already entered upon.

Said good George MÜller, “My soul I commit to the care of God, following His laws; but my body He has given into my hands, to care for, nourish, and strengthen, that I may build it up into His image.” Could we remember oftener that it was meant to be after His likeness, and the temple for His indwelling, we should be less careless of the trust committed to us. And again, were we the only sufferers from the lack of care and neglect of our bodies, it would matter less, but we are sowing seed that will spring up and bear fruit, “some thirty, some sixty and some an hundredfold,” in the generations to come; and what also of the incalculable harm from our influence upon those about us?

Could we return to the old Spartan time when only the symmetrical, healthy and vigorous were allowed to marry and bear children, our task in body-building for the future would be less difficult; but we have the rubbish accumulated by the mistakes of the body-builders behind us, through the past ages, to clear away as best we can, before we can properly enter upon our present task. As it is, the problem resolves itself into this—to make the most of the material in hand, in rooting out the bad, and culturing the good.

To begin well, the parents must bear in mind, before the baby’s beginning, that the life of the little one will be in great measure determined by what they are, not by what they may hope to be, though even this has its influence. It is a well-known fact in heredity that transient states of body and mind, are not those which are most often entailed upon offspring, but the permanent states and conditions. What the mother eats, what she thinks, what she enjoys, what habits she allows to control her, will shape largely the little life, and make her after task in body-building a difficult, or a comparatively easy one. Given a good foundation, and the superstructure which rises upon it will be solid and enduring, and as beautiful as the architect desires.

Suppose the little one is not well-born, it becomes the duty of the parents to choose its food, its dress, its plays, its surroundings, that they may make good as fast as possible, the defects known to exist in it. To do this most effectively, they will need to counsel often with their medical adviser, and become themselves conversant with the laws of hygienic living.

That very much can be done along these lines is a well attested fact, and is beautifully illustrated in our Foundlings’ Homes, where little ones coming out of all sorts and conditions of society, and many of them with the worst possible heredity, are trained out of the evil ways toward which they incline physically, and into the upward way which makes the perfect man and woman. Therefore we have no reason to be discouraged, if we have not the most perfect model to begin with, but must instead do some molding and trimming off here and there before it stands forth the fair thing we desire.

The baby’s clothing has much to do with its proper development, as already indicated. The food for the best development of the physical nature has also been emphasized, but some further remarks will not be out of place. I pity the little one that is cheated out of its rightful heritage, its mother’s breast. This is a day of bottle-fed babies, to the sorrow of the babies, and the loss to the mother of many hours of sweet comfort comparable with nothing else she may ever have, while the wee thing is taking its life from her breasts, and she is thinking high thoughts of its future and what she shall be to it. The mother who nurses her baby is much to blame, if she does not drink in the sweet lessons which come to her, of moral as well as physical dependence, while the little one hangs upon and nestles in her bosom; and she does not dream of what she misses, if she puts it off without a thought or a care of this, the sweet lessons of cuddling, nursing motherhood.

If the little thing must be bottle-fed, hold it in your arms, as nearly in its natural position as possible, and cuddle it, while you hide as far as may be the ugly, unsympathetic substitute, the nursing-bottle.

Ask many mothers how often they feed their babies, and they will tell you in the sentiment, if not the language of one who said, “Well, once in two or three hours usually, but when it has colic, or is restless it tugs away nearly all the time, day and night, until I am entirely worn out”—and I venture to say, the baby is in the same condition. The rule or no rule, with such mothers, is, when the baby cries feed it, when it frets, feed it; when it wakes, feed it; when it goes to sleep, feed it; when it has colic, feed it more; and when it is really ailing, feed it all the time. How much? Why all it will hold, until it is full to overflowing, and then wonder what ails the baby. Wise mothers smile at the absurdity; but remember you are the enquiring ones who count ignorance in such things a shame, (as you should), and you are of the favored few, while the great army of mothers belong to the other class.

For quantity and quality of food for the baby, we refer the reader to the chapter on The Care of the Baby.

Properly fed and properly dressed babies will need little medicine, even a child born with an hereditary tendency to constipation, can be coaxed out of it by regularity of good habits, and food.

For older children and adult life the common sense and good judgment of the home-keeper must decide the quality of food best suited to their individual families. For a subject which demands so much common sense for all mankind, and wise thinking, less reasonable thought is spent upon it, than upon any other branch of science the world over. Says a late writer, “It is universally known as a fact, although not much considered, that bone and blood, brain and brawn, are directly manufactured from food eaten. It is now beginning to be discovered that for centuries people have not eaten the right foods to make the best bodies. They have been ignorant of the physiological laws of nutrition, of the proper combinations and proportions of essential elements, of the vital importance attaching to such knowledge. They have cultivated artificial and abnormal tastes, sought momentary gratification in eating, and gradually demoralized their natural instincts.” There has been no study made of the development of nations as influenced by its food supply. It would give much food for thought, we have no doubt, and be a cause for surprise that the quality and quantity of food could make so much difference.

Dr. Henderson, in the Popular Science Monthly, says: “When you remember that we are dressed during the whole period of our social life, and that we eat three times every day, eleven hundred times a year, it is astonishing that these very human arts (dressing and eating) have not been brought to greater perfection. Women weep, work, and suffer the same to-day as at the dawn of the race, because they feed the young on forbidden fruit. So the children grow into men and women with curved spines, unshapely, unsymmetrical forms, and damaged brains, to suffer all through life with ills of both body and mind.”

Dr. Dio Lewis was called at one time to see the child of a friend, who “Did not know what was the matter with the dear little girl.” Dr. Lewis looked her over carefully, and then astonished the mother with a request for an entire suit of the child’s clothing. When they were brought to him he took the little one with him, and followed by the curious mother, went out into the flower-garden. He chose for his object lesson, one of the most thrifty and beautiful of the many lovely rosebushes, and dressed it in the child’s clothes; much to the delight of the little girl.

“What are you doing that funny thing for, Dr. Lewis?” she asked. “Why I want to see whether this will grow as you do when it is dressed so finely in your clothes,” said the wise doctor. “Leave it just so until I come again day after to-morrow, and we shall see how it likes it.”

He came and of course found the thrifty bush withered and dying. “Why, what is the matter here?” said the doctor to the little one.

“Why don’t you see, doctor, you have shut out all the sunshine and air, and of course it could not stand it.”

“Of course not, my dear,” said Dr. Lewis, “and no more can you.” Turning to the astonished mother, he said, “Do you see, my friend, what you have been doing for your little girl, and do you now see what is the matter with her? The child can no more live without a proper amount of sunshine and air than can the rosebush. Take off half the clothes she has been wearing, put on lighter and looser things, give her a sun-bath daily in a warm room, and allow her only simple meals at regular hours, put her to bed at seven o’clock every night, and you will hardly know her in six months.”

The advice was followed and the child became healthy and vigorous.

The old text from “The Book,” “as a man thinketh in his heart so is he,” suggests another as true. As a man eateth so is he. “The man who swallows spices, condiments, pickles, or other irritating, hot substances, is almost certain to think irritating, hot thoughts, and to speak hot words.”

Plain, simple food, well cooked and daintily served, will be as happily received by our families, (if they have not been pampered until their tastes are vitiated and bad habits formed), as the multitude of dishes which are called food, but have no right to the name, which are daily set before many growing boys and girls. The temptation into which many mothers fall of concocting, or allowing to be concocted, “fine” dishes with long sounding names, and which are good for little in nutrition, has much to do in creating depraved appetites which are averse to plain, substantial food, which really builds bodies that are worth the having.

We can sympathize heartily with the plain old farmer, whose lament is given in rhyme in a Southern medical journal:

Well cooked vegetables, bread made from unbolted flour which contains all the nutritive properties, cereals cooked sufficiently, meat—not fried—once a day, plenty of fruit cooked and uncooked, milk and water, should be all that are allowed growing children; and if desserts are given at all, simple puddings, not pie, should be in the dietary.

A story is told of a mother who took her twelve-year-old boy to her physician, complaining that he would eat only those things that he should not have, and that he felt so poorly that she could not get him out to play. The wise doctor advised her to take him out for a ride of two miles each day, and compel him to run behind the carriage on the way home. His food should be bread and milk three times daily, allowing positively nothing else for a month. He should be put to bed every night at eight o’clock, and report to him in a month. A few bread pills completed the prescription. The result seemed marvelous to the mother, and the medicine was “wonderful.”

It is undoubtedly true that as a rule we eat too much, and are surely too much a meat-eating people for the best results. Meat once daily is by the best authorities on the subject, considered sufficient for our needs. It gives nutritive elements in a more concentrated form, but in this very fact the danger lies.

It will be well for us to remember that food effects temperament decidedly, and we need only compare the different temperaments found in flesh eating and herb eating animals to learn the effect a generous meat diet has upon the human family.

I was interested in noticing the dietary of the world’s bicycle champion, for the longest six days’ ride yet made. It consisted of rice, oatmeal, barley, fruit, boiled milk, koumiss, coffee, and no meat. Arab porters, who carry great loads trotting from six in the morning until six in the evening, during one month of the year, are by their religion forbidden to partake of food between sunrise and sunset. Their morning meal is not mentioned, but at eventide they have a moderate meal of wheatmeal porridge mixed with large proportions of butter, or olive oil. “The French inspectors who are in charge of these gangs of porters, declare that during the month of fasting they do better work than at any other time because their strength is not needed for digestion.” These statements only prove to us, that as a people, we eat too much, and of too rich food, and such facts invite us to a plainer mode of living, if we desire to conserve our strength and do our best for ourselves and mankind.

I have not touched upon the subject of rest which is an important one. Many children through lack of knowledge or carelessness are allowed to fall into pernicious habits concerning sleep. Oftentimes these bad habits are fixed in the child in its tiny babyhood, when mother or nurse wakes the little one for the benefit of admiring friends.

There should be a fixed retiring-hour for the children, and nothing should be allowed to interfere with it. Each child should have a bed by itself. Little thought is given to the detriment, morally and physically, of bed-fellows for children. We have touched upon the moral danger in another chapter, and speak here of the physical. Children of different temperaments draw much from each other of electrical and vital force, and nearly always to the detriment of both. In losing anything which properly belongs to it, the system has lost its poise, and must suffer from it proportionately. Children differ much in the quantity of covering required, hence cannot properly be put under the same amount without one or the other suffering. The tendency is to throw off the clothes, and colds result.

If you have had trouble with nervous fretfulness on the part of your children, especially in the morning, and they have been in the habit of sleeping together, separate them at once and note the results. One may be a very restless child, while the other is quiet, and the consequence is the sleep of both is made miserable.

From earliest childhood accustom your children to regular sleeping hours, and do not begin by speaking in whispers and walking on tiptoe when the baby is asleep. Accustom them to sleeping with all the ordinary work or pleasure going on in the ordinary way. Of course the child should be in a room by itself if possible, especially if there are other children about.

As a people we suffer from lack of sufficient rest. We stint ourselves here as nowhere else, and little wonder that we are a nervous, restless people, with worn-out energies in early life. Too many women come to maternity tired and worn, and the result is anything but promising for their children; the chances are that their children are born with a heritage of sleeplessness, and their care is a burden to their mothers and others.

There is something fine in our great public, free school system, but to me there is something wofully pathetic also. When I find little tots, from the third grade on, nervous and anxious in the daily rush of lessons, fearing lest they will fall below the imposed standard, and so lose their grade, or be obliged to pass the dreaded examination; going about with fretted, careworn faces, I think it time to cry a halt. It is not the lessons they are crowded through, but the lessons they master that are going to be of value to them. Is there not a-crowding-them-all-into-the-same-mold, a-modeling-them-after-the-same-pattern danger, that takes largely from their individuality, and forbids the evolution of such geniuses as the past generations have known? No doubt we know more than our ancestors, but is it not a question whether we are wiser than they? For this state of things I do not attach blame to the teachers, the curricula of the schools are to blame. This is a part of the everlasting rush of the American race, and what is the remedy? All this nervous strain draws largely upon the physical nature of the child, and produces dwarfed bodies that are nerveless and tired, at the expense of crowded brains. When will our splendid educators see the wrong and devise a better way?

But not all the fault lies with the schools. Many of our children are not properly fed and rested when they enter the schoolroom, and the consequence is poor work languidly done. To obviate this, our home-keepers should be truly good cooks, and by this I mean one who knows how to make an appetizing meal from very little, and that little plain. She should know how to cook the plain solid foods in such a manner that her family will call it a royal meal, and their health and physical vigor will prove it so. Like the mother in the little story, “Bread and Cheese and Kisses,” who, when the meal was particularly scant, would say, “well, dearies, we have only bread and cheese and kisses to-night,” whereupon the kisses would be so warm and full of love, and the love pats so tender, that the little ones would sit down with hearts full of content and rise with thanksgiving and gladness.

Do we half realize how very much the food we set before our families has to do with the contentment and temper of the home, and of the school and business life? A poorly prepared, and poorly served evening meal will send our children to a night of restless, dreamy, unrefreshing sleep, and an awakening in the morning, fretful, disordered and poorly prepared for the day. An unwisely chosen breakfast, carelessly prepared, finishes the work, and our children enter the schoolrooms to endure the day as best they can, a burden to themselves and their teachers.

And right here, the mothers who have not ordered their children before birth may take comfort in the thought that they may still do much for their future by properly nourishing them. Any woman may live a great life in giving the attention she should to the hygiene of cooking for the home; for when she learns how much of knowledge is bound up in the chemistry of cooking, she will explore many fields in her research, and come out the winner in wide culture and loveliness. Much that is called cooking, is but the throwing together of the ingredients in the easiest manner possible, and often disguising the unpalatableness by spices and condiments.

The question of the weakness of our children’s eyes, has become a serious one. What is the cause and what the remedy? But a few words on the subject will suffice in a work like this. There are doubtless various causes, but among the most noticeable and most easily corrected are the following.

Improperly lighted schoolrooms, the windows being at the side and sometimes a part of them at the front. The white walls, the reflected light from which is very trying to the eyes. The constant use of the eyes for near work, which school life demands, and after the five hours in school, the two, three and sometimes four or five hours work out of school, a part of which must be done by artificial light, and that often poor.

The almost constant adjustment of the eye for near vision, which there must be by the city dwellers, with the tall buildings shutting out the far-away look, which rests the eye, in allowing the muscles of accommodation to relax. The poor print of the cheaper class of books put upon the market. The inferior paper will not admit of a clear bold type, and there must be a constant effort of the eye to adjust itself to the conditions. Much can be done to avoid the dangers, by teaching the children to close the eyes and rest them for a moment or two, whenever they feel tired, or to look as far away as possible.

You have doubtless read of “the barefoot cures,” established in a few of our foreign cities, with one, I think, in our own land. The patients are required to go out in the dew-wet grass with bare feet, for a certain time every morning, and thus to draw strength and electricity from mother earth. Could I accomplish it I would establish a barefoot cure in every home in the land. Isn’t it really more than three-fourths pride, that forbids our letting our little ones pull off their shoes and stockings, and revel for a time at least each day in the delicious freedom and coolness they could get from direct contact with mother earth?

Have any of you a child who has not teased to go barefooted, and why have you not allowed it? Do not, I pray you, cheat them out of this blissful freedom, and simple health-giving measure. Put your pride behind you. Venture the possibility that the foot may become a little larger, and let your boys and girls run barefooted for at least an hour or two each day, in the back yard, if you do not like their appearance in front, or in the park, if you have no back yards, and I venture to say you will have healthier, happier, heartier children than you have ever known. No matter how delicate they are, the more delicate the greater the need. By judicious management at the beginning, accustoming them to the change gradually and in the middle of the day, they will rarely take cold. After they have become habituated to it, you will also find that their usual colds will disappear.

Put the tiny babies out into the sand pile as soon as they can sit alone, take off their moccasins and stockings, and let their little feet come in contact with the warm sand and watch their delight.

And now I come to a common practice, which although thoughtlessly acquired is none the less pernicious, namely, the habit which many mothers have of dosing their children on all sorts of domestic nostrums, simply on the reputation that they are good for the ailments of childhood, with no idea of their fitness for the individual case, or for any case. The older I grow, and the more I learn about medicines, the more convinced I am that they are not to be tampered with. Could the composition of many of the so-called domestic remedies be known, mothers would stand appalled at their temerity in daring to administer them. We cannot measure the evil results of this indiscriminate dosing. Why are so many of these compounds put upon the market? Simply because people stand ready and willing to use them, and in doing so fancy they are sparing themselves a larger expense by way of a doctor’s fee.

You would hardly need to go into our uneducated homes to find results of antikamnia (self-ministered) antipyrine, ananalgia, or some other of the long list of anti’s or their near relatives, the various headache powders, anti-constipation teas, pills, etc., etc., without end. This habit among women, together with the tobacco habit among men has wrecked many a little lifeboat before it weighed anchor, and many an older craft has gone to pieces on the rocks because of them.

And now a last word on another bit of seed-sowing that brings forth more than an hundredfold in harvest. Mothers, do you dream what you may be doing when you use brandy and wine in your cookery, or the beer that makes your welsh rarebit “so much better,” to use a quotation from one who uses it. Is it safe in these days of intemperance to create the taste for alcoholics in your children that in after years may demand the gratification which drags them down to death, and carries with them many others? Could we know the effects upon a transient guest often, we would wonder, how, for the sake of custom we had allowed ourselves to play with the poison that destroys all that is beautiful in many homes, and sends to death yearly a countless throng, that some of our children may help to swell, if we do not do our utmost to stay it.

I have tried in these few hints on body-building to show young mothers how much they can do, if they set about intelligently learning how to care for their children. Make the study a painstaking one, and you will bless your families by your research, and the world by the healthy men and women you send out.

A noble band of women, which is yearly increasing, have set themselves the task of instituting a new order of things, and the great problems of childhood, girlhood and boyhood, wifehood, motherhood, and fatherhood, are being studied with a will to master their mysteries, and endow the coming generation with a clearer knowledge of the causes which have led to much of the sin and sorrow in home and society. Mother’s meetings and Congresses witness the awakening of many along these lines and herald a brighter future for our grandchildren than our children have enjoyed; and that there is a call for such a book as this, evidences the recognition of the need for knowledge along these lines.

Some one has wisely said, “what we need most is a generation of educated mothers.” The few are aware of this and have long since passed into the higher grades of such an education; but for the many mothers who have not yet entered the schools, such chapters as this are written. To keep abreast of the questionings of her children, to be thoroughly informed on all the subjects which touch their training and well-being is, next to her religion, the highest prerogative of woman to-day. For any mother to be so prepared that she can teach her children truth, and in such a wholesome way that it shall beautify their whole after lives, and keep them close to her in counsel, is a noble outlook for any woman. And what other right or privilege can be above this?

I am coming to think that a woman is living a great life, and doing a great service for humanity, who trains well one child—if this be all she should and can have—Godward and manward. True she may do this and do much else; but if she be a mother, all else she may do, neglecting this, can never bring to her or the world much blessing. All else she may do while fulfilling well this duty, will but make her the better mother and world-helper. No mother can divorce the home and fireside from her work and retain success and happiness.

J. C. Fernauld has said truly, “With every mother the relation of motherhood should be the controlling one, and in all doubtful cases, mother duty should have the benefit of the doubt.” Charles H. Parkhurst says: “Society rises no higher than the mass, and the measure of the home is the mother. In the last analysis the world’s downward pressure is sustained by woman, and more than the public generally suspects, the man’s talent for achievement is supported by the wife’s or mother’s genius for quiet, patient, continuous endurance.”

“A nation rises no higher than its mothers.”

A beginning has been made in our schools toward a wider knowledge along the lines of being, which heralds the day when teachers who are intelligent in these matters shall prepare our young people for the responsibilities of life—then those whose home training has been neglected, shall not come out of our schools unprepared, but fitted to take their places as home-makers, as fathers and mothers who shall be capable of training their children in the wisest way.