“The Science of Feeding Babies,” 1916, by H. Elizabeth Gould (aka Mrs. Hannah Elizabeth Gould), a maternity nurse.
Gould says that babies two weeks old or less can be fed on an “oatmeal solution” mixed with milk (or other protein/fat liquids). She specifically advocates “Rotch solution,” which is two-thirds whole milk and one-third starch, along with a little sugar to taste. Oat starch, specifically – she gives a recipe to make it, in Appendix 10, and the starch is salted.
A similar recipe is “Oat Jelly,” which is 1 quart boiling water and 1/2 teaspoon of salt to two heaping tablespoons of rolled oats. Boil down to half a quart, and then strain. This can be fed either with milk or without, and you can add a little sugar to make it more palatable. Yes, it’s gooey, but it definitely won’t hurt a kid unless he’s allergic to oats. It’s not enough to satisfy all of a kid’s needs, but it’s a start.
Obviously Gould’s love of cow milk and breastmilk doesn’t deal with lactose-intolerant babies, because that used to be uncommon or undiagnosed. (However, some babies can drink goat’s milk when they can’t drink whole milk, or they might be able to drink other foods like oat milk or rice milk.) Her belief was that the primary use of carbs for baby formulas was to make cow milk casein easier to digest, which was why she served them together.
Another formula in Appendix 10 is “oatmeal gruel,” which is very boiled oatmeal mixed with meat stock and milk, and strained. So there’s protein, carbs, and fat.
Egg, sugar, and lemon juice is another formula. It’s basically an egg ceviche/custard. I think today you’d have to cook the egg, unless you knew for sure that your eggs didn’t have salmonella. But you could use hot rice or boiling water to soft-cook an egg into custardy consistency.
If a baby has not been able to eat much recently, she advises frequent feeding (for ten or fifteen minutes, every two hours) of as much food as the baby will eat, until the baby gets more weight and starts to thrive. Older babies can be given bits of softened Graham crackers for extra nourishment.
A typical nourishing breakfast for a 16 month old could be an egg softboiled in water, together with some Graham cracker crumbled and stirred into the softboiled egg. Foods like custard (egg) pudding, chicken stew, and Graham crackers crumbled into milk were also nourishing to children of this age.
Other bland, nourishing foods for children of weaning age who needed to gain weight (and fight scurvy with vitamins) were brown bread and butter (there’s a brown bread recipe in the appendix, and it’s made with equal parts wheat flour, corn flour, and oats), baked potato with meat juice, meat broths, rice pudding, baked apple, oatmeal, and cornmeal mush with milk. (This was from a time when oranges were scarce; but potatoes also have a lot of Vitamin C.) Orange juice and berries (“in season”) are also praised.
Gould advocates eggs strongly, and for good reason, because of course they include almost everything a chick (or a human) needs for life. She was all for raw eggs in certain situations, but of course that doesn’t work with salmonella.
Gould also advocates whole grains like wheat, oats, corn, and rye, or supplementing white flour bread with stuff like meat juice and eggs. She wants whole grains cooked down like a congee, and hulls preferably strained out because babies find them hard to digest. Cream of Wheat is considered especially suitable. (Rice was not super-common in her part of the country.)
People forget that in the old days, it was considered more important to make sure babies got some fat on their bones and some calories in their bodies. So yes, she advocates sugar, maple syrup, and other add-ons to food. Butter is strongly advocated for kids one year old and up. Older kids are also encouraged to eat vegetable soups, milk soups, beans, and so on, with the object of making sure that they eat plenty of protein.
Gould also advocates teaching children to be interested in eating meals, instead of wanting to run off before finishing or becoming fussy eaters, by having their mother tell the kids interesting little stories at dinner time, and by making meal times orderly but relaxing. I don’t know if this works, but it sounds fun for everyone. She also advocates a separate children’s table and children’s meal… and her reasons are interesting. We tend to forget that stuff we don’t agree with, had its own rationales.
The appendix on labor/maternity/lactation advice is… well, some of the advice would still be used today, and others not. But it’s interesting, that’s for sure, and probably the most free-spoken historical advice I’ve ever come across. Appendix 10 talks about how to make homemade Murphy bandages for nursing help.
The plasters and enema advice are also pretty dated. Feel free to ignore.
Aliens in This World 