Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why: What Medical Writers SayAllen, Martha Meir
Science
Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why: What Medical Writers Say
Allen, Martha Meir
Alcohol -- Physiological effect; Temperance
"Infants nursed by mothers who drink much beer also become
fatter than usual, and to an untrained eye sometimes appear as
'magnificent children.' But the fatness of such children is not
a recommendation to the more knowing observer; they are
extremely prone to die of inflammation of the chest (bronchitis)
after a few days' illness from an ordinary cold. They die, very
much more frequently than other children, of convulsions and
diarrhoea, while cutting their teeth, and they are very liable
to die of scrofulous inflammation of the membranes of the brain,
commonly called 'water on the brain,' while their childhood
often presents a painful contrast--in the way of crooked legs,
and stunted or ill-shapen figure--to the 'magnificent,' and
promising appearance of their infancy.
"Those ladies who adopt the general views I have thus expressed
in relation to the nursing of their children, will want to know
what is the 'proper artificial food' with which to supplement
their milk when it is deficient in quantity. With some patients
the milk will fall off in quantity at the end of two or three
months. With others, although the quantity may not fall off, the
child seems unsatisfied; and there is a third class with whom a
profusion of milk is supplied, and the child thrives
exceedingly, but the mother gets flabby, weak, nervous, pale and
exhausted. In the last case, the mother is simply goaded on by
susceptibility of her nervous system, or by inordinate activity
of the breasts to yield an amount of milk which her digestive
powers are not equal to providing for. The treatment of such
cases should be simply repressive. The mother should separate
herself somewhat more from the child, and make a rule of only
nursing it from five to eight times in the twenty-four hours,
while the neck of the mother should be kept cool in regard to
dress, and cold sponging may be practiced carefully night and
morning. Her attention should be diverted by outdoor exercise on
foot, and additionally in a carriage if necessary. When the
mother's milk, though apparently not deficient in quantity,
proves unsatisfying to the child, great attention should be paid
to varying the diet of the mother, while such staple foods
should be taken as are most easily and thoroughly assimilated
into milk. The unsatisfying quality of the milk will generally
be remedied by taking a more varied diet, together with three or
four half pints of milk in the course of the day, accompanied
with farinaceous matter, as in the shape of well-made milk
gruel; and in case these measures fail, the only alternative is
to supplement the mother's milk by obtaining a wet-nurse to
suckle the child three or four times a day alternately with the
mother, or by feeding the child with proper artificial food. The
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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