MH page 383

The best food for the infant is the food that nature provides. Of this it should not be needlessly deprived. It is a heartless thing for a mother, for the sake of convenience or social enjoyment, to seek to free herself from the tender office of nursing her little one.

Natural maternal milk is the optimal food for infants. The text asserts that breast milk is the best food for infants and discourages withholding it for convenience.

The mother who permits her child to be nourished by another should consider well what the result may be. To a greater or less degree the nurse imparts her own temper and temperament to the nursing child.

A wet nurse may transmit temper and temperament to a nursing child. Contains an empirical claim about the transmission of temperament through milk or nursing.

The importance of training children to right dietetic habits can hardly be overestimated. The little ones need to learn that they eat to live, not live to eat. The training should begin with the infant in its mother's arms. The child should be given food only at regular intervals, and less frequently as it grows older. It should not be given sweets, or the food of older persons, which it is unable to digest. Care and regularity in the feeding of infants will not only promote health, and thus tend to make them quiet and sweet-tempered, but will lay the foundation of habits that will be a blessing to them in after years.

Regular feeding intervals and simple foods promote infant health and habit formation. The paragraph makes claims about regular feeding intervals, avoiding sweets, and the resulting health and behavior of infants.