Gelatin for Babies

Puking, puling, whining babies irritate the neighbors, worry fond parents. Hungry, they gobble milk frantically down, then throw it up pitifully. Last week, in a reprint from the Archives of Pediatrics, Dr. H. H. Perlman, instructor in Diseases of Children, Jefferson Medical College, announced the results of his experiments with malnourished children at the Ocean City (N. J.) Seashore Home for Babies. Gelatin was added to the milk for one group of babies; another group received the same diet minus the gelatin. The gelatinized fed infants gained more, vomited less, regurgitated rarely. Gelatin makes cows' milk more digestible by breaking up the tough, difficultly digested casein allowing the digestive juices to get at the smaller particles; at the same time its spreading sticky quality keeps food down which in liquid form would be immediately rejected by a sensitive irritable stomach. Some idiosyncratic infants, however, may not take kindly to gelatin.