rich, highly seasoned
viands, sweetmeats, and epicurean dishes which seldom fail to form some
part of the bill of fare. It is true that many children are endowed with
so much constitutional vigor that they do live and seemingly thrive,
notwithstanding dietetic errors; but the integrity of the digestive
organs is liable to be so greatly impaired by continued ill-treatment
that sooner or later in life disease results. Till the age of three
years, sterilized milk, whole-wheat bread in its various forms, such of
the grains as contain a large share of gluten, prepared in a variety of
palatable ways, milk and fruit toasts, and the easily digested fruits,
both raw and cooked, form the best dietary. Strained vegetable soups may
be occasionally added for variety. For from three to six years the same
simple regimen, with easily digested and simply prepared vegetables,
macaroni, and legumes prepared without skins, will be all-sufficient. If
desserts are desirable, let them be simple in character and easily
digestible. Tea, coffee, hot bread and biscuit, fried foods of all
kinds, salted meats, preserves, rich puddings, cake, and pastries should
be wholly discarded from the children's bill of fare.

It is especially important that a dietary for children should contain an
abundance of nitrogenous material. It is needed not only for repairs,
but must be on deposit for the purpose of food. Milk, whole-wheat bread,
oatmeal, barley, and preparations of wheat, contain this element in
abundance, and should for this reason be given great prominence in the
children's dietary.

Flesh foods are in no way necessary for children, since the food
elements of which they are composed can be supplied from other and
better sources, and many prominent medical authorities unite in the
opinion that such foods are decidedly deleterious, and should not be
used at all by children under eight or ten years of age. Experiments
made by Dr. Camman, of New York, upon the dietary of nearly two hundred
young children in an orphan's home, offer conclusive evidence that the
death rate among children from gastro-intestinal troubles is greatly
lessened by the exclusion of meat from their dietary. Dr. Clouston, of
Edinburgh, an eminent medical authority, states that in his experience,
those children who show the greatest tendencies to instability of the
brain, insanity, and immoral habits are, as a rule, those who use animal
food in excess; and that he has seen a chang