Remarks on the Subject of Lactation | Page 4

suck more than ten. In many cases suckling
may be relinquished with advantage (and occasionally it is absolutely
necessary to discontinue it) before the time first above mentioned; in
others, however, it may be protracted beyond it.
I by no means recommend the breast-milk to be at once superseded by
artificial food, but, on the contrary, that the child should be gradually
accustomed to such aliment from a much earlier period; the proportion
of the latter being increased by degrees, while the breast-milk is
diminished in a corresponding ratio. Hence we shall produce a double
advantage; the mother will be benefited as well as the child--the former,
by giving suck less frequently, and in smaller quantities at a time than
usual, will have the secretion of milk gradually lessened, and, therefore
all likelihood of inconvenience, as far as regards herself when the child
is entirely weaned, will be completely prevented; while, on the other
hand, the child being insensibly estranged from the breast, will have
become accustomed to his new food, so that there will be less chance of
its disagreeing with him when it forms his sole support; and thus the
danger which is generally apprehended from weaning will be either
materially lessened or altogether avoided.

The difficulty of bringing up infants by hand, as it is termed, is well
known; but I suspect that the great mortality which has been recorded
as occurring from this source is not inseparable from the practice itself,
but arises mainly from the improper manner in which it is usually
conducted. When it is determined to bring up an infant by hand, the
substitute offered for the mother's milk should as nearly as possible
resemble that fluid; and the child should be constrained to imbibe it in
the same manner as it would the milk from the maternal breast; that is,
it should be sucked from a bottle contrived for that purpose, instead of
the child being gorged with it, by means of a large spoon, or some other
equally improper instrument, as is the usual custom. It is a fact too
palpable to be questioned, that the food generally given to infants
brought up by hand is not only administered in an improper manner,
but is also of an improper quality; their tender stomachs are daily
overloaded with solid instead of liquid aliment, and hence arises the
numerous train of evils which, in my opinion, produce the great
mortality just referred to.
CHAPTER II.
On Lactation, and the Disorders frequently produced in Women by that
process.
There can be no doubt that, speaking generally, a mother is bound to
suckle her children, and that the performance of this duty is no less
conducive to her own health than to the moral and physical welfare of
her offspring; yet there is not a more unfounded doctrine than that
which presumes every woman who is willing to be also capable of
advantageously discharging the important office of a nurse.
If the mother enjoy good health, and the process be not continued too
long, it is likely to produce beneficial effects both in herself and her
infant; but if she be of a very delicate habit--labour under any
dangerous disease--be subject during the period of lactation to great
affliction, or constant mental inquietude--or should the periodical
appearance return, pregnancy occur, or suckling be continued too long,
it may not only prove highly detrimental to herself, but may be the

means of occasioning serious or fatal consequences to her child.
In cases of extreme delicacy of constitution, lactation will often
produce the worst effects. Many young ladies, on becoming mothers,
are incapable of supporting the constant drain to which the wants of
their infants subject them--they lose their good looks, become gradually
weaker, and as their strength declines, their milk is simultaneously
lessened in quantity, and altered in its other properties.
If the suckling be still continued, their debility daily increases,
distressing pains in the back and loins succeed; the patients become
exceedingly nervous, as it is termed, and are unusually susceptible of
ordinary impressions; pain in the head, often of great violence, follows,
which, in some cases, is succeeded by delirium, in others, by absolute
mania. Nor is this the whole catalogue of ills to which in such cases the
unfortunate mother is subjected: the appetite fails, distressing languor is
experienced by day, while copious perspirations deluge her by night,
and dissipate the last remains of strength--producing a state which may
easily be mistaken for, or terminate in, true pulmonary
consumption;--finally, the sight becomes progressively weaker, until
vision is almost destroyed; the eyelids exude a glutinous secretion, and
ophthalmia itself is occasionally induced.
These are the symptoms too often caused by lactation in delicate or
debilitated habits, even a few months after delivery; the same also are