Perhaps some will read this reply with impatience; being able, as they think, to cite facts totally at variance with it. It may appear absurd if we deny the relevancy of these facts. And yet the paradox is quite defensible. The truth is, that the instances of excess which such persons have in mind, are usually the consequences of the restrictive system they seem to justify. They are the sensual reactions caused by an ascetic regimen. They illustrate on a small scale that commonly-remarked truth, that those who during youth have been subject to the most rigorous discipline, are apt afterwards to rush into the wildest extravagances. They are analogous to those frightful phenomena, once not uncommon in convents, where nuns suddenly lapsed from the extremest austerities into an almost demoniac wickedness. They simply exhibit the uncontrollable vehemence of long-denied desires. Consider the ordinary tastes and the ordinary treatment of children. The love of sweets is conspicuous and almost universal among them. Probably ninety-nine people in a hundred presume that there is nothing more in this than gratification of the palate; and that, in common with other sensual desires, it should be discouraged. The physiologist, however, whose discoveries lead him to an ever-increasing reverence for the arrangements of things, suspects something more in this love of sweets than is currently supposed; and inquiry confirms the suspicion. He finds that sugar plays an important part in the vital processes. Both saccharine and fatty matters are eventually oxidised in the body; and there is an accompanying evolution of heat. Sugar is the form to which sundry other compounds have to be reduced before they are available as heat-making food; and this formation of sugar is carried on in the body. Not only is starch changed into sugar in the course of digestion, but it has been proved by M. Claude Bernard that the liver is a factory in which other constituents of food are transformed into sugar: the need for sugar being so imperative that it is even thus produced from nitrogenous substances when no others are given. Now, when to the fact that children have a marked desire for this valuable heat-food, we join the fact that they have usually a marked dislike to that food which gives out the greatest amount of heat during oxidation (namely, fat), we have reason for thinking that excess of the one compensates for defect of the other – that the organism demands more sugar because it cannot deal with much fat. Again, children are fond of vegetable acids. Fruits of all kinds are their delight; and, in the absence of anything better, they will devour unripe gooseberries and the sourest of crabs. Now not only are vegetable acids, in common with mineral ones, very good tonics, and beneficial as such when taken in moderation; but they have, when administered in their natural forms, other advantages. "Ripe fruit," says Dr. Andrew Combe, "is more freely given on the Continent than in this country; and, particularly when the bowels act imperfectly, it is often very useful." See, then, the discord between the instinctive wants of children and their habitual treatment. Here are two dominant desires, which in all probability express certain needs of the child's constitution; and not only are they ignored in the nursery-regimen, but there is a general tendency to forbid the gratification of them. Bread-and-milk in the morning, tea and bread-and-butter at night, or some dietary equally insipid, is rigidly adhered to; and any ministration to the palate is thought needless, or rather, wrong. What is the consequence? When, on fête-days, there is unlimited access to good things – when a gift of pocket-money brings the contents of the confectioner's window within reach, or when by some accident the free run of a fruit-garden is obtained; then the long-denied, and therefore intense, desires lead to great excesses. There is an impromptu carnival, due partly to release from past restraints, and partly to the consciousness that a long Lent will begin on the morrow. And then, when the evils of repletion display themselves, it is argued that children must not be left to the guidance of their appetites! These disastrous results of artificial restrictions, are themselves cited as proving the need for further restrictions! We contend, therefore, that the reasoning used to justify this system of interference is vicious. We contend that, were children allowed daily to partake of these more sapid edibles, for which there is a physiological requirement, they would rarely exceed, as they now mostly do when they have the opportunity: were fruit, as Dr. Combe recommends, "to constitute a part of the regular food" (given, as he advises, not between meals, but along with them), there would be none of that craving which prompts the devouring of crabs and sloes. And similarly in other cases.
Not only is it that the à priori reasons for trusting the appetites of children are strong; and that the reasons assigned for distrusting them are invalid; but it is that no other guidance is worthy of confidence. What is the value of this parental judgment, set up as an alternative regulator? When to "Oliver asking for more," the mamma or governess says "No," on what data does she proceed? She thinks he has had enough. But where are her grounds for so thinking? Has she some secret understanding with the boy's stomach – some clairvoyant power enabling her to discern the needs of his body? If not, how can she safely decide? Does she not know that the demand of the system for food is determined by numerous and involved causes – varies with the temperature, with the hygrometric state of the air, with the electric state of the air – varies also according to the exercise taken, according to the kind and quantity of food eaten at the last meal, and according to the rapidity with which the last meal was digested? How can she calculate the result of such a combination of causes? As we heard said by the father of a five-years-old boy, who stands a head taller than most of his age, and is proportionately robust, rosy, and active: – "I can see no artificial standard by which to mete out his food. If I say, 'this much is enough,' it is a mere guess; and the guess is as likely to be wrong as right. Consequently, having no faith in guesses, I let him eat his fill." And certainly, any one judging of his policy by its effects, would be constrained to admit its wisdom. In truth, this confidence, with which most parents legislate for the stomachs of their children, proves their unacquaintance with physiology: if they knew more, they would be more modest. "The pride of science is humble when compared with the pride of ignorance." If any one would learn how little faith is to be placed in human judgments, and how much in the pre-established arrangements of things, let him compare the rashness of the inexperienced physician with the caution of the most advanced; or let him dip into Sir John Forbes's work, On Nature and Art in the Cure of Disease; and he will see that, in proportion as men gain knowledge of the laws of life, they come to have less confidence in themselves, and more in Nature.
Turning from the question of quantity of food to that of quality, we may discern the same ascetic tendency. Not simply a restricted diet, but a comparatively low diet, is thought proper for children. The current opinion is, that they should have but little animal food. Among the less wealthy classes, economy seems to have dictated this opinion – the wish has been father to the thought. Parents not affording to buy much meat, answer the petitions of juveniles with – "Meat is not good for little boys and girls;" and this, at first probably nothing but a convenient excuse, has by repetition grown into an article of faith. While the classes with whom cost is no consideration, have been swayed partly by the example of the majority, partly by the influence of nurses drawn from the lower classes, and in some measure by the reaction against past animalism.
If, however, we inquire for the basis of this opinion, we find little or none. It is a dogma repeated and received without proof, like that which, for thousands of years, insisted on swaddling-clothes. Very probably for the infant's stomach, not yet endowed with much muscular power, meat, which requires considerable trituration before it can be made into chyme, is an unfit aliment. But this objection does not tell against animal food from which the fibrous part has been extracted; nor does it apply when, after the lapse of two or three years, considerable muscular vigour has been acquired. And while the evidence in support of this dogma, partially valid in the case of very young children, is not valid in the case of older children, who are, nevertheless, ordinarily treated in conformity with it, the adverse evidence is abundant and conclusive. The verdict of science is exactly opposite to the popular opinion. We have put the question to two of our leading physicians, and to several of the most distinguished physiologists, and they uniformly agree in the conclusion, that children should have a diet not less nutritive, but, if anything, more nutritive than that of adults.
The grounds for this conclusion are obvious, and the reasoning simple. It needs but to compare the vital processes of a man with those of a boy, to see that the demand for sustenance is relatively greater in the boy than in the man. What are the ends for which a man requires food? Each day his body undergoes more or less wear – wear through muscular exertion, wear of the nervous system through mental actions, wear of the viscera in carrying on the functions of life; and the tissue thus wasted has to be renewed. Each day, too, by radiation, his body loses a large amount of heat; and as, for the continuance of the vital actions, the temperature of the body must be maintained, this loss has to be compensated by a constant production of heat: to which end certain constituents of the body are ever undergoing oxidation. To make up for the day's waste, and to supply fuel for the day's expenditure of heat, are, then, the sole purposes for which the adult requires food. Consider now the case of the boy. He, too, wastes the substance of his body by action; and it needs but to note his restless activity to see that, in proportion to his bulk, he probably wastes as much as a man. He, too, loses heat by radiation; and, as his body exposes a greater surface in proportion to its mass than does that of a man, and therefore loses heat more rapidly, the quantity of heat-food he requires is, bulk for bulk, greater than that required by a man. So that even had the boy no other vital processes to carry on than the man has, he would need, relatively to his size, a somewhat larger supply of nutriment. But, besides repairing his body and maintaining its heat, the boy has to make new tissue – to grow. After waste and thermal loss have been provided for, such surplus of nutriment as remains goes to the further building up of the frame; and only in virtue of this surplus is normal growth possible; the growth that sometimes takes place in the absence of it, causing a manifest prostration consequent upon defective repair. It is true that because of a certain mechanical law which cannot be here explained, a small organism has an advantage over a large one in the ratio between the sustaining and destroying forces – an advantage, indeed, to which the very possibility of growth is owing. But this admission only makes it the more obvious that though much adverse treatment may be borne without this excess of vitality being quite out-balanced; yet any adverse treatment, by diminishing it, must diminish the size or structural perfection reached. How peremptory is the demand of the unfolding organism for materials, is seen alike in that "schoolboy hunger," which after-life rarely parallels in intensity, and in the comparatively quick return of appetite. And if there needs further evidence of this extra necessity for nutriment, we have it in the fact that, during the famines following shipwrecks and other disasters, the children are the first to die.
This relatively greater need for nutriment being admitted, as it must be, the question that remains is – shall we meet it by giving an excessive quantity of what may be called dilute food, or a more moderate quantity of concentrated food? The nutriment obtainable from a given weight of meat is obtainable only from a larger weight of bread, or from a still larger weight of potatoes, and so on. To fulfil the requirement, the quantity must be increased as the nutritiveness is diminished. Shall, we, then, respond to the extra wants of the growing child by giving an adequate quantity of food as good as that of adults? Or, regardless of the fact that its stomach has to dispose of a relatively larger quantity even of this good food, shall we further tax it by giving an inferior food in still greater quantity?
The answer is tolerably obvious. The more the labour of digestion is economised, the more energy is left for the purposes of growth and action. The functions of the stomach and intestines cannot be performed without a large supply of blood and nervous power; and in the comparative lassitude that follows a hearty meal, every adult has proof that this supply of blood and nervous power is at the expense of the system at large. If the requisite nutriment is obtained from a great quantity of innutritious food, more work is entailed on the viscera than when it is obtained from a moderate quantity of nutritious food. This extra work is so much loss – a loss which in children shows itself either in diminished energy, or in smaller growth, or in both. The inference is, then, that they should have a diet which combines, as much as possible, nutritiveness and digestibility.
It is doubtless true that boys and girls may be reared upon an exclusively, or almost exclusively, vegetable diet. Among the upper classes are to be found children to whom comparatively little meat is given; and who, nevertheless, grow and appear in good health. Animal food is scarcely tasted by the offspring of labouring people; and yet they reach a healthy maturity. But these seemingly adverse facts have by no means the weight commonly supposed. In the first place, it does not follow that those who in early years flourish on bread and potatoes, will eventually reach a fine development; and a comparison between the agricultural labourers and the gentry, in England, or between the middle and lower classes in France is by no means in favour of vegetable feeders. In the second place, the question is not simply a question of bulk, but also a question of quality. A soft, flabby flesh makes as good a show as a firm one; but though to the careless eye, a child of full, flaccid tissue may appear the equal of one whose fibres are well toned, a trial of strength will prove the difference. Obesity in adults is often a sign of feebleness. Men lose weight in training. Hence the appearance of these low-fed children is far from conclusive. In the third place, besides size, we have to consider energy. Between children of the meat-eating classes and those of the bread-and-potato-eating classes, there is a marked contrast in this respect. Both in mental and physical vivacity the peasant-boy is greatly inferior to the son of a gentleman.
If we compare different kinds of animals, or different races of men, or the same animals or men when differently fed, we find still more distinct proof that the degree of energy essentially depends on the nutritiveness of the food.
In a cow, subsisting on so innutritive a food as grass, we see that the immense quantity required necessitates an enormous digestive system; that the limbs, small in comparison with the body, are burdened by its weight; that in carrying about this heavy body and digesting this excessive quantity of food, much force is expended; and that, having but little remaining, the creature is sluggish. Compare with the cow a horse – an animal of nearly allied structure, but habituated to a more concentrated diet. Here the body, and more especially its abdominal region, bears a smaller ratio to the limbs; the powers are not taxed by the support of such massive viscera, nor the digestion of so bulky a food; and, as a consequence, there is greater locomotive energy and considerable vivacity. If, again, we contrast the stolid inactivity of the graminivorous sheep with the liveliness of the dog, subsisting on flesh or farinaceous matters, or a mixture of the two, we see a difference similar in kind, but still greater in degree. And after walking through the Zoological Gardens, and noting the restlessness with which the carnivorous animals pace up and down their cages, it needs but to remember that none of the herbivorous animals habitually display this superfluous energy, to see how clear is the relation between concentration of food and degree of activity.
That these differences are not directly consequent on differences of constitution, as some may argue; but are directly consequent on differences in the food which the creatures are constituted to subsist on; is proved by the fact, that they are observable between different divisions of the same species. The varieties of the horse furnish an illustration. Compare the big-bellied, inactive, spiritless cart-horse with a racer or hunter, small in the flanks and full of energy; and then call to mind how much less nutritive is the diet of the one than that of the other. Or take the case of mankind. Australians, Bushmen, and others of the lowest savages who live on roots and berries, varied by larvae of insects and the like meagre fare, are comparatively puny in stature, have large abdomens, soft and undeveloped muscles, and are quite unable to cope with Europeans, either in a struggle or in prolonged exertion. Count up the wild races who are well grown, strong and active, as the Kaffirs, North-American Indians, and Patagonians, and you find them large consumers of flesh. The ill-fed Hindoo goes down before the Englishman fed on more nutritive food; to whom he is as inferior in mental as in physical energy. And generally, we think, the history of the world shows that the well-fed races have been the energetic and dominant races.
Still stronger, however, becomes the argument, when we find that the same individual animal is capable of more or less exertion according as its food is more or less nutritious. This has been demonstrated in the case of the horse. Though flesh may be gained by a grazing horse, strength is lost; as putting him to hard work proves. "The consequence of turning horses out to grass is relaxation of the muscular system." "Grass is a very good preparation for a bullock for Smithfield market, but a very bad one for a hunter." It was well known of old that, after passing the summer in the fields, hunters required some months of stable-feeding before becoming able to follow the hounds; and that they did not get into good condition till the beginning of the next spring. And the modern practice is that insisted on by Mr. Apperley – "Never to give a hunter what is called 'a summer's run at grass,' and, except under particular and very favourable circumstances, never to turn him out at all." That is to say, never give him poor food: great energy and endurance are to be obtained only by the continued use of nutritive food. So true is this that, as proved by Mr. Apperley, prolonged high-feeding enables a middling horse to equal, in his performances, a first-rate horse fed in the ordinary way. To which various evidences add the familiar fact that, when a horse is required to do double duty, it is the practice to give him beans – a food containing a larger proportion of nitrogenous, or flesh-making material, than his habitual oats.
Once more, in the case of individual men the truth has been illustrated with equal, or still greater, clearness. We do not refer to men in training for feats of strength, whose regimen, however, thoroughly conforms to the doctrine. We refer to the experience of railway-contractors and their labourers. It has been for years a well-established fact that an English navvy, eating largely of flesh, is far more efficient than a Continental navvy living on farinaceous food: so much more efficient, that English contractors for Continental railways found it pay to take their labourers with them. That difference of diet and not difference of race caused this superiority, has been of late distinctly shown. For it has turned out, that when the Continental navvies live in the same style as their English competitors, they presently rise, more or less nearly, to a par with them in efficiency. And to this fact let us here add the converse one, to which we can give personal testimony based upon six months' experience of vegetarianism, that abstinence from meat entails diminished energy of both body and mind.
Do not these various evidences endorse our argument respecting the feeding of children? Do they not imply that, even supposing the same stature and bulk to be attained on an innutritive as on a nutritive diet, the quality of tissue is greatly inferior? Do they not establish the position that, where energy as well as growth has to be maintained, it can only be done by high feeding? Do they not confirm the à priori conclusion that, though a child of whom little is expected in the way of bodily or mental activity, may thrive tolerably well on farinaceous substances, a child who is daily required, not only to form the due amount of new tissue, but to supply the waste consequent on great muscular action, and the further waste consequent on hard exercise of brain, must live on substances containing a larger ratio of nutritive matter? And is it not an obvious corollary, that denial of this better food will be at the expense either of growth, or of bodily activity, or of mental activity; as constitution and circumstances determine? We believe no logical intellect will question it. To think otherwise is to entertain in a disguised form the old fallacy of the perpetual-motion schemers – that it is possible to get power out of nothing.
Before leaving the question of food, a few words must be said on another requisite —variety. In this respect the dietary of the young is very faulty. If not, like our soldiers, condemned to "twenty years of boiled beef," our children have mostly to bear a monotony which, though less extreme and less lasting, is quite as clearly at variance with the laws of health. At dinner, it is true, they usually have food that is more or less mixed, and that is changed day by day. But week after week, month after month, year after year, comes the same breakfast of bread-and-milk, or, it may be, oatmeal-porridge. And with like persistence the day is closed, perhaps with a second edition of the bread-and-milk, perhaps with tea and bread-and-butter.
This practice is opposed to the dictates of physiology. The satiety produced by an often-repeated dish, and the gratification caused by one long a stranger to the palate, are not meaningless, as people carelessly assume; but they are the incentives to a wholesome diversity of diet. It is a fact, established by numerous experiments, that there is scarcely any one food, however good, which supplies in due proportions or right forms all the elements required for carrying on the vital processes in a normal manner: whence it follows that frequent change of food is desirable to balance the supplies of all the elements. It is a further fact, known to physiologists, that the enjoyment given by a much-liked food is a nervous stimulus, which, by increasing the action of the heart and so propelling the blood with increased vigour, aids in the subsequent digestion. And these truths are in harmony with the maxims of modern cattle-feeding, which dictate a rotation of diet.
Not only, however, is periodic change of food very desirable; but, for the same reasons, it is very desirable that a mixture of food should be taken at each meal. The better balance of ingredients, and the greater nervous stimulation, are advantages which hold here as before. If facts are asked for, we may name as one, the comparative ease with which the stomach disposes of a French dinner, enormous in quantity but extremely varied in materials. Few will contend that an equal weight of one kind of food, however well cooked, could be digested with as much facility. If any desire further facts, they may find them in every modern book on the management of animals. Animals thrive best when each meal is made up of several things. The experiments of Goss and Stark "afford the most decisive proof of the advantage, or rather the necessity, of a mixture of substances, in order to produce the compound which is the best adapted for the action of the stomach."5
Should any object, as probably many will, that a rotating dietary for children, and one which also requires a mixture of food at each meal, would entail too much trouble; we reply, that no trouble is thought too great which conduces to the mental development of children, and that for their future welfare, good bodily development is of still higher importance. Moreover, it seems alike sad and strange that a trouble which is cheerfully taken in the fattening of pigs, should be thought too great in the rearing of children.
One more paragraph, with the view of warning those who may propose to adopt the regimen indicated. The change must not be made suddenly; for continued low-feeding so enfeebles the system, as to disable it from at once dealing with a high diet. Deficient nutrition is itself a cause of dyspepsia. This is true even of animals. "When calves are fed with skimmed milk, or whey, or other poor food, they are liable to indigestion."6 Hence, therefore, where the energies are low, the transition to a generous diet must be gradual: each increment of strength gained, justifying a fresh addition of nutriment. Further, it should be borne in mind that the concentration of nutriment may be carried too far. A bulk sufficient to fill the stomach is one requisite of a proper meal; and this requisite negatives a diet deficient in those matters which give adequate mass. Though the size of the digestive organs is less in the well-fed civilised races than in the ill-fed savage ones, and though their size may eventually diminish still further, yet, for the time being, the bulk of the ingesta must be determined by the existing capacity. But, paying due regard to these two qualifications, our conclusions are – that the food of children should be highly nutritive; that it should be varied at each meal and at successive meals; and that it should be abundant.
With clothing as with food, the usual tendency is towards an improper scantiness. Here, too, asceticism peeps out. There is a current theory, vaguely entertained if not put into a definite formula, that the sensations are to be disregarded. They do not exist for our guidance, but to mislead us, seems to be the prevalent belief reduced to its naked form. It is a grave error: we are much more beneficently constituted. It is not obedience to the sensations, but disobedience to them, which is the habitual cause of bodily evils. It is not the eating when hungry, but the eating in the absence of hunger, which is bad. It is not drinking when thirsty, but continuing to drink when thirst has ceased, that is the vice. Harm does not result from breathing that fresh air which every healthy person enjoys; but from breathing foul air, spite of the protest of the lungs. Harm does not result from taking that active exercise which, as every child shows us, Nature strongly prompts; but from a persistent disregard of Nature's promptings. Not that mental activity which is spontaneous and enjoyable does the mischief; but that which is persevered in after a hot or aching head commands desistance. Not that bodily exertion which is pleasant or indifferent, does injury; but that which is continued when exhaustion forbids. It is true that, in those who have long led unhealthy lives, the sensations are not trustworthy guides. People who have for years been almost constantly in-doors, who have exercised their brains very much and their bodies scarcely at all, who in eating have obeyed their clocks without consulting their stomachs, may very likely be misled by their vitiated feelings. But their abnormal state is itself the result of transgressing their feelings. Had they from childhood never disobeyed what we may term the physical conscience, it would not have been seared, but would have remained a faithful monitor.
Among the sensations serving for our guidance are those of heat and cold; and a clothing for children which does not carefully consult these sensations, is to be condemned. The common notion about "hardening" is a grievous delusion. Not a few children are "hardened" out of the world; and those who survive, permanently suffer either in growth or constitution. "Their delicate appearance furnishes ample indication of the mischief thus produced, and their frequent attacks of illness might prove a warning even to unreflecting parents," says Dr. Combe. The reasoning on which this hardening-theory rests is extremely superficial. Wealthy parents, seeing little peasant boys and girls playing about in the open air only half-clothed, and joining with this fact the general healthiness of labouring people, draw the unwarrantable conclusion that the healthiness is the result of the exposure, and resolve to keep their own offspring scantily covered! It is forgotten that these urchins who gambol upon village-greens are in many respects favourably circumstanced – that their lives are spent in almost perpetual play; that they are all day breathing fresh air; and that their systems are not disturbed by over-taxed brains. For aught that appears to the contrary, their good health may be maintained, not in consequence of, but in spite of, their deficient clothing. This alternative conclusion we believe to be the true one; and that an inevitable detriment results from the loss of animal heat to which they are subject.