DRINKS.
Infants need little drink. Adults, even, generally drink to cool
themselves. Simple water the best drink. Opinions of Dr. Oliver and Dr.
Dewees. Animal food increases thirst. Only one real drink in the world.
The true object of all drink. Tea, coffee, chocolate, beer, &c. Milk and
water, molasses and water, &c. Cider, wine, and ardent spirits. Bad food
and drink the most prolific sources of disease. Children naturally
prefer water. Danger of hot drinks. Cold drinks. Mischief they produce.
Caution to mothers. Extracts. Drinking cold water, while hot.
Children need little if any drink, so long as their food is nothing but
milk; nor indeed for some time afterward, unless they are indulged in
the use of animal food. Adults, even, very seldom drink merely to quench
natural thirst. In the summer, people usually drink either to cool
themselves, or to gratify a thirst which is wholly artificial. Tea,
coffee, beer, cider, and most other common drinks, when not used for the
sake of their coolness, are drank, both in winter and summer, for this
purpose.
That this is the fact, we have the most abundant and unequivocal
evidence. I know that much is said of the demand which a profuse
perspiration creates among hard laborers in the summer. Such a sudden
abstraction of a large amount of fluid requires, it is said, a
proportional supply, or life would soon become extinct. Yet there are
many old men who have perspired profusely at their labor all their days,
and yet have drank nothing at all, except their tea, morning and
evening; and perhaps have eaten, for one or two of their meals daily, in
summer, a bowl of bread and milk. And some of them are among the most
remarkable instances of longevity which the country affords.
How the system acquires a sufficient supply of moisture to keep up good
health, in these cases, I do not pretend to determine: perhaps it is
through the medium of the lungs. But at any rate, it can obtain it
without our drinking for that sole purpose, to the great danger of
exciting liver complaints, diarrhoea, dyspepsia, colds, rheumatisms, and
fevers.
But if adults who perspire freely do not require much drink, children
certainly do not; and above all, young children. And if they do require
any thing, it is only simple water. The following remarks of Dr. Oliver,
of Hanover, N.H., are extracted from Dr. Mussey's late Prize Essay on
Ardent Spirits:
"Who has not observed the extreme satisfaction which children derive
from quenching their thirst with pure water? And who that has perverted
his appetite for drink, by stimulating his palate with bitter beer, sour
cider, rum and water, and other beverages of human invention, but would
be a gainer, even on the score of mere animal gratification, without any
reference to health, if he could bring back his vitiated taste to the
simple relish of nature?
"Children drink because they are dry. Grown people drink, whether dry or
not, because they have discovered a way of making drink pleasant.
Children drink water because this is a beverage of nature's own brewing,
which she has made for the purpose of quenching a natural thirst. Grown
people drink anything but water, because this fluid is intended to
quench only a natural thirst; and natural thirst is a thing which they
seldom feel."
There is a great deal of truth, as well as of sound philosophy, in these
two paragraphs, and little less of truth in the following paragraph from
Dr. Dewees:
"We have witnessed very often, with sorrow, parents giving to their
young children wine, or other stimulating liquors. Nature never intended
anything stronger than water to be the drink for children. This they
enjoy greatly; and much advantage is occasionally experienced from its
use, especially after they have commenced the use of animal food."
Two things are to be observed in the last remarks, which are, that
children demand drink of any kind but seldom, and that even this
occasional demand is often the special result of the use of animal food.
Here comes out an important secret. It is the use of animal food, to a
very great degree, in adults and children both, that creates so much of
that unnatural thirst which prevails in the community. When we shall
come to lay aside animal food, in childhood, youth, manhood and age,
much that is now _called_ thirst will be banished; and much of the
intemperance and other kinds of sensuality which follow in its train.
It has been sometimes said that there is but one kind of drink in the
world--and that is water. This is strictly, or rather _physiologically_
true. For, though many mixtures are _called_ drinks, it is only the
water which they contain that answers any of the legitimate purposes for
which drink was intended by the Creator.
The object of drink, besides quenching our thirst, or rather _while_ it
quenches it, is, not to be digested, like food, but to pass directly
from the stomach into the blood-vessels, and dilute and temper the
blood, rendering it more fit to answer the great purpose of sustaining
life and health. Now, there is nothing that can do this but water.
Alcohol cannot do it, nor can turpentine, oil, quicksilver, melted lead,
or any other liquid.
Tea, coffee, chocolate, small beer, soda water, lemonade, &c., which are
nearly all water, quench the thirst very well, it is true; but not quite
so well as water alone would. The narcotic principle of the first two,
the alcoholic principle of the fourth, and the mucilage, nutriment,
acid, and alkali of the rest, are in the way; for thirst would be
quenched still better without them, even when it is of an unnatural
kind.
Indeed, the same or similar remarks may be made in regard to all other
mixtures which are usually proposed as drinks. Even milk and water,
molasses and water, &c., in favor of which so much is said, are
objectionable, as mere drinks. Not that they contain anything poisonous,
but they evidently contain nutriment; and even this, except as a part or
the whole of a regular meal, does harm; for it sets the stomach at work
when it needs repose. Mere drink, as I have already said, is never
digested.
But if the drinks above mentioned, and even milk and water, are
objectionable, what shall we say of cider, wine, and ardent
spirits?--substances which contain, the latter one half, and the two
former from one twentieth to one fourth alcohol. Surely, nobody will
deny that these substances ought, at all events, to be banished from the
nursery. And yet we occasionally find them there, not only for the use
of the mother, to the ruin of the child, indirectly--but also, in some
of their smoother forms, for the use of the child itself.
I would not lay too much stress on food and drink; for, as I have
already observed, more than once, the causes of infantile ill health and
mortality are numerous. Still I must insist that, of all the sources of
disease, these are the most prolific. Much is done towards ruining the
health of children by the improper food and drink of the mother. But
when, in addition to all this, the children themselves are early fed
with animal food, and with stimulating drinks--punch, coffee, tea,
&c.--and an artificial thirst is early excited and rendered habitual,
their destruction, for time and eternity, is almost inevitable.
Very few children relish any drink but water, or sweetened water, at
first; and where they do, it is probably hereditary. I have been struck
with their tastes and preferences; nor less with the folly of those
around them, in endeavoring to change them, by requiring them--almost
always against their will--to sip a little coffee, or a little tea, or
a little lemonade; or, it may be, a little toddy. Such children _may_
escape the death of the drunkard or the debauchee; but if they do, it
will not be through the instrumentality of the parents.
I am very much opposed to giving children hot drinks of any kind. If
they are to drink substances which are injurious, as tea or coffee, let
them be cool. I do not say _cold_, for that would be going to the other
extreme. But no drink, in any ordinary case, should be above the heat of
our bodies; that is, about 98 degrees of Fahrenheit's thermometer. Yet
the precautions of this paragraph will be almost unnecessary, if
children are confined--as they ought to be, and would be, did we not go
out of our way to teach them otherwise--to water, as their only drink.
Cold water is almost always preferred. Not one child in a thousand would
ever prefer it hot, until his taste had been perverted. No writer has
inveighed more against hot drinks of every kind, than the late William
Cobbett--and, as I think, with more justice.
But, in avoiding one rock, we must not, as has already been intimated,
make shipwreck on another. Hot drinks, though they injure the powers of
the stomach, and by that means and through that medium, are one
principal cause of the almost universal early decay of teeth, are yet
less injurious, or at least less dangerous, immediately, than cold ones.
Mr. Locke, in speaking of the sports of a child, in the open air, has
the following quaint, but judicious remarks:
"Playing in the open air has but this one danger in it, that I know; and
that is, that when he is hot with running up and down, he should sit or
lie down on the cold or moist earth. This, I grant, and drinking cold
drink, when they are hot with labor or exercise, brings more people to
the grave, or to the brink of it, by fevers and other diseases, than
anything I know. These mischiefs are easily enough prevented when he is
little, being then seldom out of sight. And if, during his childhood, he
be constantly and rigorously kept from sitting on the ground, or
drinking any cold liquor, while he is hot, the custom of forbearing,
grown into _habit_, will help much to preserve him, when he is no longer
under his maid's or tutor's eye.
"More fevers and surfeits are got by people's drinking when they are
hot, than by any one thing I know. If he (the child) be very hot, he
should by no means _drink_; at least a good piece of bread, first to be
eaten, will gain time to warm his drink _blood hot_, which then he may
drink safely. If he be very dry, it will go down so warmed, and quench
his thirst better; and if he will not drink it so warmed, abstaining
will not hurt him. Besides, this will teach him to forbear, which is a
habit of the greatest use for health of mind and body too."
The last remarks are full of wisdom. Mothers may depend upon it, that
every indulgence to which they accustom their children paves the way for
_habitual_ indulgence; and has a tendency to lead, indirectly, to
indulgence in other matters; and, on the contrary, every self-denial
which they can lead children to exercise, voluntarily--even in these
every-day matters of food, drink, exercise, &c. is so much gained in the
great work of self-denial and the resisting of temptation in matters of
higher importance. But I must not moralize too long; having dwelt on
this same point under the head Confectionary. I proceed, therefore, to
make a few more extracts from Mr. Locke:
"Not being permitted to _drink_ without eating, will prevent the custom
of having the cup often at his nose; a dangerous beginning."
"Men often bring habitual hunger and thirst on themselves by custom."
"You may, if you please, bring any one to be thirsty every hour."
"I once lived in a house, where, to appease a froward child, they gave
him _drink_ as often as he cried, so that he was constantly bibbing.
And though he could not speak, yet he drank more in twenty-four hours
than I did."
"It is convenient, for health and sobriety, to drink no more than
natural thirst requires; and he that eats not salt meats, nor drinks
strong drink, will seldom thirst between meals."
Great mischief is often done to their health by children at school; and
one instance of this is, in getting violently heated with exercise, and
then pouring down large quantities of cold water to cool themselves. I
once made it a habitual rule for pupils, that they must drink water, if
they drank it at all, on leaving their seats to go to their plays, but
not afterwards: and I was so situated that I could prevent the law from
being broken, as there was no spring or well to which they could have
access, privately. And though they thought the rule rather severe, I
have no doubt it saved them from much injury, and perhaps sometimes from
sickness.