The Physical Life of Woman: Advice to the Maiden, Wife and MotherNapheys, George H. (George Henry)
Science
The Physical Life of Woman: Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother
Napheys, George H. (George Henry)
Women -- Health and hygiene
Travellers among savage nations report many examples of such unnatural
nursing. Dr. Livingstone says he has frequently seen in Africa a
grandchild suckled by a grandmother. Dr. Wm. A. Gillespie, of Virginia
records, in the _Boston Medical and Surgical Journal_, the case of a
widow, aged about sixty, whose daughter having died, leaving a child two
months old, took the child and tried to raise it by feeding. The child's
bowels became deranged, and being unable to procure a nurse, and her
breasts being large and full, he advised her to apply the child, in hopes
milk would come. She followed his advice perseveringly, and, to her
astonishment, a plentiful secretion of milk was the result, with which
she nourished the child, which afterwards became strong and healthy. A
similar instance, still more remarkable, is recorded of a woman at
seventy years, who twenty years wet-nursed a grandchild after her last
confinement.
Cases of nursing in the opposite extreme of life are also well
authenticated. The distinguished French physician Baudelocque has
related that of a deaf and dumb girl, eight years old, who, by the
repeated application to her breast of a young infant, which her mother
was suckling, had sufficient milk to nourish the child for a month,
while the mother was unable to nurse it on account of sore nipples. The
little girl was shown to the Royal Academy of Surgery on the 16th of
February, 1783. The quantity of milk was such, that by simply pressing
the breast it was made to flow out in the presence of the Academy, and
on the same day, at the house of Baudelocque, before a large class of
pupils. Again, an interesting case is known of a young woman, who, in
consequence of the habit of applying the infant of her mistress to her
breast in order to quiet it, caused a free secretion of milk. In the
Cape de Verde Islands, it is stated that virgins, old women, and even
men, are frequently employed as wet-nurses. Humboldt speaks of a man,
thirty-two years old, who gave the breast to his child for five months.
Captain Franklin saw a similar case in the Arctic regions. Professor
Hall presented to his class in Baltimore a negro, fifty-five years old,
who had been the wet-nurse of all the children of his mistress.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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