And the method of grating and pounding meat, as a substitute for
chewing, may be well suited to the toothless octogenarian, whose
stomach is capable of digesting it; but the stomach of a young child is
not adapted to the digestion of such food, and will be disordered by
it."[FN#10]
[FN#10] Sir James Clarke on Consumption.
"If the principles already laid down be true, it cannot reasonably be
maintained that a child's mouth without teeth, and that of an adult,
furnished with the teeth of carnivorous and graminivorous animals, are
designed by the Creator for the same sort of food. If the mastication
of solid food, whether animal or vegetable, and a due admixture of
saliva, be necessary for digestion, then solid food cannot be proper,
when there is no power of mastication. If it is swallowed in large
masses it cannot be masticated at all, and will have but a small chance
of being digested; and in an undigested state it will prove injurious
to the stomach and to the other organs concerned in digestion, by
forming unnatural compounds. The practice of giving solid food to a
toothless child, is not less absurd, than to expect corn to be ground
where there is no apparatus for grinding it. That which would be
considered as an evidence of idiotism or insanity in the last instance,
is defended and practised in the former.
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