for the use of a baby, then about eight months
old she had spent nine pounds in "Infant's Preservative." Of this, or of
some like preparation, the advertisements tells us that it compels Nature
to be orderly, and that all infants take it with greediness. So we have
even justice to the child. Pet drinks Preservative; papa drinks Port.

Then there is "farinaceous food." Here, for a purpose, we must interpolate
a bit of science. There is a division of food into two great classes,
nourishment and fuel. Nourishment is said to exist chiefly in animal flesh
and blood, and in vegetable compounds which exactly correspond thereto,
called vegetable fibrine, albumen, and caseine. Fuel exists in whatever
contains much carbon: fat and starchy vegetables, potatoes, gum, sugar,
alcoholic liquors. If a person take more nourishment than he wants, it is
said to be wasted; if he take more fuel than he wants, part of it is
wasted, and part of it the body stacks away as fat. These men of science
furthermore assert, that the correct diet of a healthy man must contain
eight parts of fuel food to one of nourishment. This preserves
equilibrium, they say--suits, therefore, an adult; the child which has to
become bigger as it lives has use for an excess of nourishment. And so one
of the doctors, Dr. R.D. Thomson, gives this table; it has been often
copied. The proportion of nourishment to fuel is in

Milk (food for a 1 to 2.
growing animal)
Beans 1 to
2-1/2.
Oatmeal 1 to 5.
Barley 1 to 7.
Wheat flour (food 1 to 8.
for an animal at
rest)
Potatoes 1 to 9.
Rice 1 to 10.
Turnips 1 to 11.
Arrow-root, tapioca, 1 to 26.
sago
Starch 1 to 40.

Very well, gentlemen, we take your facts. As aegritudinary men, we know
what use to make of them. We will give infants farinaceous food;
arrow-root, tapioca, and the like; quite ready to be taught by you that so
we give one particle of nourishment in twenty-six. Tell us, this diet is
like putting leeches on a child. We are content. Leeches give a delicate
whiteness that we are thankful to be able to obtain with out the biting or
the bloodshed.

Sanitary people will allow a child, up to its seventh year, nothing beyond
bread, milk, water, sugar, light meat broth, without fat, and fresh meat
for its dinner--when it is old enough to bite it--with a little well-cook