healthy, is the infant's only ideally fit food. There are some people
whose confidence in science leads them to believe that it is possible to
manufacture foods that are as good or better than mother's milk; they
fancy that the milk which is best for the calf is equally best for so
different an animal as the baby. These are delusions. The infant's best
food is that elaborated in his own mother's body. All other foods are more
or less possible substitutes, which require trouble to prepare properly
and are, moreover, exposed to various risks from which the mother's milk
is free.

A further reason, especially among the poor, against the use of any
artificial foods is that it accustoms those around the child to try
experiments with its feeding and to fancy that any kind of food they eat
themselves may be good for the infant. It thus happens that bread and
potatoes, brandy and gin, are thrust into infants' mouths. With the infant
that is given the breast it is easier to make plain that, except by the
doctor's orders, nothing else must be given.

An additional reason why the mother should suckle her child is the close
and frequent association with the child thus involved. Not only is the
child better cared for in all respects, but the mother is not deprived of
the discipline of such care, and is also enabled from the outset to learn
and to understand the child's nature.

The inability to suckle acquires great significance if we realize
that it is associated, probably in a large measure as a direct
cause, with infantile mortality. The mortality of
artificially-fed infants during the first year of life is seldom
less than double that of the breast-fed, sometimes it is as much
as three times that of the breast-fed, or even more; thus at