EXPERIMENTS IN MALNUTRITION
at the mass feeding of a whole nation. We sought such scientific advice as was to be obtained—there were no experts. We soon found that the children were failing on a ration that should be ample for adults.”
“One of the first effects of the invasion was to denude the people of Belgium to a very large extent, and the north of France, almost wholly of their cattle. The people were absolutely dependent for the rearing of their children on these cattle. The number of debilitated children up to ten years of age greatly increased. The number of adolescent children developing tuberculosis increased to a disheartening degree. In consequence of this it was necessary to maintain a stream of condensed milk for four years. Something over 1,000,000 children of the Belgian and French towns and cities were put under systematic inspection and feeding and this continued during the last three and a half years of the occupation. After the armistice, public health statistics in the war zone showed that the disease mortality among children was less than the pre-war normal, in spite of the fact that they went through nearly five years of continuous famine.”
“There is no cruelty to a population greater than to rob them of their milch cows,—the white race cannot survive without dairy products.”
“Let’s finish our job by doing for the children of America what we have done for the children of Europe. Let’s give them the benefit of the knowledge and experience we got abroad, very largely at the expense of the American people who gave so freely for relief work.” ***** Extract from the reprint, “An Interesting Experiment with Mal-Nourished Children,” taken from the August 1922 issue of the Nations Health Magazine.
“This brief report is submitted as constituting another method of approach to the mal-nutrition problem. It outlines the first of a series of experiments undertaken in order to ascertain the comparative value of fluid milk and condensed milk in the treatment of undernourished children.
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