The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease. | Page 7

M.D. Thomas Bull
OUGHT NEVER TO SUCKLE.

There are some females who ought never to undertake the office of
suckling, both on account of their own health, and also that of their
offspring.
THE WOMAN OF A CONSUMPTIVE AND STRUMOUS
CONSTITUTION OUGHT NOT.--In the infant born of such a parent
there will be a constitutional predisposition to the same disease; and, if
it is nourished from her system, this hereditary predisposition will be
confirmed.
"No fact in medicine is better established than that which proves the
hereditary transmission from parents to children of a constitutional
liability to pulmonary disease, and especially to consumption; yet no
condition is less attended to in forming matrimonial engagements. The
children of scrofulous and consumptive parents are generally
precocious, and their minds being early matured, they engage early in
the business of life, and often enter the married state before their bodily
frame has had time to consolidate. For a few years every thing seems to
go on prosperously, and a numerous family gathers around them. All at
once, however, even while youth remains, their physical powers begin
to give way, and they drop prematurely into the grave, exhausted by
consumption, and leaving children behind them, destined, in all

probability, either to be cut off as they approach maturity, or to run
through the same delusive but fatal career as that of the parents from
whom they derived their existence."[FN#5] There is scarcely an
individual who reads these facts, to whom memory will not furnish
some sad and mournful example of their truth; though they perhaps
may have hitherto been in ignorance of the exciting cause.

[FN#5] Combe's Principles of Physiology applied to the Preservation of
Health, etc.

It is, however, with the mother as a nurse that I have now to do, and I
would earnestly advise every one of a consumptive or strumous habit
(and if there is any doubt upon this point, the opinion of a medical
adviser will at once decide it) never to suckle her offspring; her
constitution renders her unfit for the task. And, however painful it may
be to her mind at every confinement to debar herself this delightful
duty, she must recollect that it will be far better for her own health, and
infinitely more so for that of the child, that she should not even attempt
it; that her own health would be injured, and her infant's, sooner or later,
destroyed by it.
The infant of a consumptive parent, however, must not be brought up
by hand. It must have a young, healthy, and vigorous wet-nurse; and in
selecting a woman for this important duty very great care must be
observed.[FN#6] The child should be nursed until it is twelve or fifteen
months old. In some cases it will be right to continue it until the first set
of teeth have appeared, when it will be desirable that a fresh wet-nurse
should be obtained for the last six months.[FN#7] If the child is
partially fed during the latter months (from necessity or any other
cause), the food should be of the lightest quality, and constitute but a
small proportion of its nutriment.

[FN#6] See "Choice of a Wet-nurse," p. 28.

[FN#7] One that has been confined about six weeks or two months.

But not only must the nourishment of such a child be regarded, but the
air it breathes, and the exercise that is given to it; as also, the careful
removal of all functional derangements as they occur, by a timely
application to the medical attendant, and maintaining, especially, a
healthy condition of the digestive organs. All these points must be
strictly followed out, if any good is to be effected.
By a rigid attention to these measures the mother adopts the surest
antidote, indirectly, to overcome the constitutional predisposition to
that disease, the seeds of which, if not inherited from the parent, are but
too frequently developed in the infant during the period of nursing; and,
at the same time, she takes the best means to engender a sound and
healthy constitution in her child. This, surely, is worth any sacrifice.
If the infant derives the disposition to a strumous constitution entirely
from the father, and the mother's health be unexceptionable, then I
would strongly advise her to suckle her own child.
THE MOTHER OF A HIGHLY SUSCEPTIBLE NERVOUS
TEMPERAMENT OUGHT NOT.--There are other women who ought
never to become nurses. The mother of a highly nervous temperament,
who is alarmed at any accidental change she may happen to notice in
her infant's countenance, who is excited and agitated by the ordinary
occurrences of the day; such a parent will do her offspring more harm
than good by attempting to suckle it. Her milk will be totally unfit for
its nourishment: at one time
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