Petroleum Oil Stoves arc the cheapest, safest, and most efficient way of cooking known. Why buy bakers' bread, with its alum and other adulterations ? Get one of Wright and Butler’s ‘ Little Bakers ’ which anyone can use, and make your own home-made bread. Illustrated Catalogue free from Wright and Butlor, Limited, Birmingham.— See Advertisement. 108 ENGLISH AND FRENCH COOKERY. many long chronic diseases, is quite irreplaceable by any other article whatever. It seems to act in the same manner as beef-tea, and to most people it is much easier of digestion than milk ; in fact, it seldom disagrees. ‘But jelly is another article of diet in great favour with nurses and friends of the sick. Even if it could be eaten solid, it would not nourish ; but it is simply the height of folly to take the eighth of an ounce of gelatine, and make it into a certain bulk by dissolving it in water, and then give it to the sick, as if the mere bulk represented nourishment. It is now known that jelly does not nourish, that it has a tendency to produce diarrhoea, and to trust to it to repair the waste of a diseased constitution is simply to starve the sick under pretence of feeding them. The reason why beef -tea should be nourishing and jelly not so to the sick is a secret yet undiscovered, but it clearly shows that observation of the sick is the only clue to the best dietary.’ ‘ An almost universal error among nurses,’ says Florence Nightingale, 1 is in the bulk of the food, and especially the drinks, they offer to their patients. Suppose a patient were ordered 4 ounces of brandy during the day, how is he to take this if you make it into 4 pints by diluting it ? The same with tea and beef -tea, with arrowroot, milk, etc. You have not increased the nourishment, you have not increased the reno- vating power of these articles by increasing their bulk — you have very likely diminished both by giving the patient’s digestion more to do. It requires very nice observation and care to determine what will be too thick or strong for the patient to take, while giving him no more than the bulk which he is able to swallow. ’ This is true of the nursery as well as the sickroom, for the nicest care is necessary in the preparing as well as the selecting of infants’ foods. Many of the prepared foods before the public are excellent, but many are greatly wanting in the first essentials of infant dietary. As Liebig said, and is almost as true to-day, ‘ It is no mistake, but a fact, that the usual farinaceous foods are the causes of most of the diseases, and of half the cases of death, among all the babes, in the country as well as in all large towns.’ The reason of this being, as pointed out by another equally good authority, 1 that the secretion of saliva in the young child does not become established until the third month after birth, which seems to indicate that before that age farinaceous articles of diet are unsuited to the infant, as saliva is one of the most important agents in the digestion of starchy foods.’ Objection, on the other hand, is made to cow’s milk and condensed milk when used alone, for, as Dr. Routh states, ‘ Human milk is always alkaline ; hence another reason why cow’s milk disagrees with many children. Cow’s milk is acid, unless the animal has been fed exclusively upon grass. It is always acid in stall-fed cows.’

AI-modernized reading of the original text

Petroleum Oil Stoves arc the cheapest, safest, and most efficient way of cooking known. Why buy bakers' bread, with its alum and other adulterations ? Get one of Wright and Butler’s ‘ Little Bakers ’ which anyone can use, and make your own home-made bread. Illustrated Catalogue free from Wright and Butlor, Limited, Birmingham.— See Advertisement. many long chronic diseases, is quite irreplaceable by any other article whatever. It seems to act in the same manner as beef-tea, and to most people it is much easier of digestion than milk ; in fact, it seldom disagrees. ‘But jelly is another article of diet in great favour with nurses and friends of the sick. Even if it could be eaten solid, it would not nourish ; but it is simply the height of folly to take the eighth of an ounce of gelatine, and make it into a certain bulk by dissolving it in water, and then give it to the sick, as if the mere bulk represented nourishment. It is now known that jelly does not nourish, that it has a tendency to produce diarrhoea, and to trust to it to repair the waste of a diseased constitution is simply to starve the sick under pretence of feeding them. The reason why beef -tea should be nourishing and jelly not so to the sick is a secret yet undiscovered, but it clearly shows that observation of the sick is the only clue to the best dietary.’ ‘ An almost universal error among nurses,’ says Florence Nightingale, 1 is in the bulk of the food, and especially the drinks, they offer to their patients. Suppose a patient were ordered 4 ounces of brandy during the day, how is he to take this if you make it into 4 pints by diluting it ? The same with tea and beef -tea, with arrowroot, milk, etc. You have not increased the nourishment, you have not increased the renovating power of these articles by increasing their bulk — you have very likely diminished both by giving the patient’s digestion more to do. It requires very nice observation and care to determine what will be too thick or strong for the patient to take, while giving him no more than the bulk which he is able to swallow. ’ This is true of the nursery as well as the sickroom, for the nicest care is necessary in the preparing as well as the selecting of infants’ foods. Many of the prepared foods before the public are excellent, but many are greatly wanting in the first essentials of infant dietary. As Liebig said, and is almost as true to-day, ‘ It is no mistake, but a fact, that the usual farinaceous foods are the causes of most of the diseases, and of half the cases of death, among all the babes, in the country as well as in all large towns.’ The reason of this being, as pointed out by another equally good authority, 1 that the secretion of saliva in the young child does not become established until the third month after birth, which seems to indicate that before that age farinaceous articles of diet are unsuited to the infant, as saliva is one of the most important agents in the digestion of starchy foods.’ Objection, on the other hand, is made to cow’s milk and condensed milk when used alone, for, as Dr. Routh states, ‘ Human milk is always alkaline ; hence another reason why cow’s milk disagrees with many children. Cow’s milk is acid, unless the animal has been fed exclusively upon grass. It is always acid in stall-fed cows.’

English and French cookery