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Show World Attention Today Is Turned On Baby Feeding EVERY day new things are discovered dis-covered about the feeding of the baby. Whether he be normal, nor-mal, premature or only a well baby whose development has been momentarily mo-mentarily checked by a brief Illness, Ill-ness, he Is sure to get a liberal ,mourt of attention from the med- actl profession and the world at SwiA "The skin is dry, roughened and pale gray and the temperature almost al-most always subnormal. As Qrulee puts It this type of child looks Ue a 'diminutive wrinkled old man." "Our feeding problem," snr"J I ' West, "Is to supply a readJir 01 gestible high caloric type of lng with a low fat and mgar non-tent. non-tent. Modified unsweetened evaporated evapo-rated milk furnishes such a fond. Since the popularizing of unsweetened unsweet-ened evaporated milk, for use tu infant feeding, it has supplanted the plain cow's milk dilutions to a large extent in the management of the athreptlc baby. "The advantages of unsweetened evaporated milk are well known. Being practically a double strength whole cow's milk, It lends itself to dilutions similarly to that of the latter, with the exception that tho evaporated product cannot be skimmed skim-med Another virtue lies In tho :i Now a special group of babies are on the floor for attention. Among the profession they are known as the marasmic babies. Their parents know them as unfortunate un-fortunate little things that are suffering suf-fering from a severe form of malnutrition mal-nutrition which demands medical supervision and very great care in feeding. Dr. John Howell West of Baston, Pennsylvania, has been doing some very interesting research on the feeding of a marasmic group of 152 babies in the pediatric department of Easton Hospital according to a recent paper published in the Archive of Pediatric. , "The marasmic baby is usually intolerant to fats and sugars," says Dr. West, "and for this reason does not do well on the ordinary raw or cooked cow's milk dilutions with soluble carbohydrate additions. A very digestible high caloric type of feeding is essential The easily digested unsweetened evaporated milk with additions of calcium caselnate and starch has been found to satisfactorily fulfill these requirements." Dr. West describes these babies as hungry, emaciated, wizened little ereatares, frequently weighing less than at birth. They have a persistent, persist-ent, constant hungry cry which only ceases at times through exhaustion. ex-haustion. "The child gives every indication ef abdominal pain, probably Induced In-duced by hunger contractions of w Ue stomach," Dr. West explains. homogenlzation of its fat with resulting re-sulting breaking up of the large fat globules of plain cov.-'s milk int3 tiny droplets resembling the fat of human milk. The evaporation process proc-ess also results in the comminution comminu-tion and softening of the large, tough curd with resulting soft floc-culent floc-culent masses comparable to the curd of human milk. Other obvious advantages are Its sterility, cleanliness clean-liness and uniformity of composition. composi-tion. . Kerley has suggested that the marantic infant takes it with about half of the digestive effort required for plain cow's 'milk dilutions. dilu-tions. A very Important argument In favor of this type of feeding, and one not sufficiently stressed. Is the fact that evaporated milk may be fed and digested in much stronger strong-er dilutions than plain cow's milk, and so provides the additional calories ca-lories frequently required to put the baby 'over the top' nutritionally. nutrition-ally. "For several years a flexible modification of the usual evaporated evapo-rated milk formulas has been found very useful by me In the Pediatric Department of the Easton Hospital and also in private practice." prac-tice." "In addition to the satisfactory gains in weight," says Dr. West, "the babies as a group became happy and contented, slept well, developed excellent tissue turgor with an adequate amount of subcutaneous sub-cutaneous fat The skin became ruddy, soft and well nourished." |