Missionary Travels and Researches in South AfricaLivingstone, David
Religion
Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa
Livingstone, David
Missions -- South Africa; South Africa -- Description and travel
I have examined several cases in which a grandmother has taken upon
herself to suckle a grandchild. Masina of Kuruman had no children after
the birth of her daughter Sina, and had no milk after Sina was weaned,
an event which usually is deferred till the child is two or three years
old. Sina married when she was seventeen or eighteen, and had twins;
Masina, after at least fifteen years' interval since she had suckled
a child, took possession of one of them, applied it to her breast, and
milk flowed, so that she was able to nurse the child entirely. Masina
was at this time at least forty years of age. I have witnessed several
other cases analogous to this. A grandmother of forty, or even less,
for they become withered at an early age, when left at home with a young
child, applies it to her own shriveled breast, and milk soon follows.
In some cases, as that of Ma-bogosing, the chief wife of Mahure, who was
about thirty-five years of age, the child was not entirely dependent on
the grandmother's breast, as the mother suckled it too. I had witnessed
the production of milk so frequently by the simple application of the
lips of the child, that I was not therefore surprised when told by
the Portuguese in Eastern Africa of a native doctor who, by applying
a poultice of the pounded larvae of hornets to the breast of a woman,
aided by the attempts of the child, could bring back the milk. Is it not
possible that the story in the "Cloud of Witnesses" of a man, during the
time of persecution in Scotland, putting his child to his own breast,
and finding, to the astonishment of the whole country, that milk
followed the act, may have been literally true? It was regarded and is
quoted as a miracle; but the feelings of the father toward the child of
a murdered mother must have been as nearly as possible analogous to the
maternal feeling; and, as anatomists declare the structure of both
male and female breasts to be identical, there is nothing physically
impossible in the alleged result. The illustrious Baron Humboldt quotes
an instance of the male breast yielding milk; and, though I am not
conscious of being over-credulous, the strange instances I have examined
in the opposite sex make me believe that there is no error in that
philosopher's statement.
The Boers know from experience that adult captives may as well be
left alone, for escape is so easy in a wild country that no
fugitive-slave-law can come into operation; they therefore adopt the
system of seizing only the youngest children, in order that these may
forget their parents and remain in perpetual bondage. I have seen mere
infants in their houses repeatedly. This fact was formerly denied; and
the only thing which was wanting to make the previous denial of the
practice of slavery and slave-hunting by the Transvaal Boers no longer
necessary was the declaration of their independence.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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