The doctor at home and nurse's guidebook / edited by George Black.

Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The doctor at home and nurse's guidebook / edited by George Black. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    654/684 (page 602)
    services of a wet nurse. As the choice of a person to fill this position is one of very great importance and as many of the points which deter- mine the choice are not so apparent to the untrained eye, the selection of a wet nurse generally devolves upon the doctor. This is the safest course. The nurse should be per- fectly healthy and free from the taint of hereditary or other consti- tutional disease, in order that the child’s constitution may not be contaminated. That the mother may be aided, however, in making her selection, Dr. Edward H. Parker, in his Handbook for Mothers, offers the following suggestions :— 1. The nurse’s milk should be of about the same age as that of the mother ; that is, her child should have been born at about the same time as the one she should nurse. The milk furnished by a woman varies at different times, changing from the first that is drawn to the last. A woman with a new breast of milk—that is, who has just been confined—is not fitted to nurse a child who is six months old ; neither is a woman with a six months’ breast of milk, the best fitted to nurse a newly-born babe. This is, however, a consideration of less importance after the infant is six months old. After that time it is safer to choose a woman who has not nursed more than six months. 2. If there are two women, in other respects of equal qualifica- tions, one of whom has a child still living which she has put out to nurse, while the other has lost her infant, without hesitation select the latter. 3. The age of the nurse should not usually be under twenty years, or over twenty-eight, this being about the period at which they are most likely to yield a rich, healthy milk. 4. A woman with brown or black hair should be selected in prefer- ence to one with light or red hair; and of the last two, the former should have the preference. The reason is simply this, that light- haired women, although they often have more milk than those who are of a darker complexion, do not furnish in it so much nourishment ; their milk is more watery, though it may be more abundant. Red- haired women are apt to be quicker to become angry and to have tem- pers not so well regulated as others. 5. The nurse should be of good form and plump, with a white, hard breast, marbled with bluish veins and a nipple of good size, perfectly free from cracks and eruptions, with gums firm and red, and with good teeth. The general appear- ance of the face should be that of health. 6. It is scarcely necessary to add that it is desirable to select for a nurse a woman of gentle disposi- tion and of common sense and intelli- gence, rather than a stupid or iras- cible one. It may be of use to some readers to say that wet nurses very rarely need beer, ale, or other malt liquor, to enable them to perform their duties. These drinks are often necessary for a feeble mother, to enable her to bear the drain upon her ; but a woman who requires them ought not to become a wet nurse. The habit of taking stronger liquors, as brandy, gin or whisky, is a good and sufficient reason for rejecting a nurse. Their influence on the child is injurious. WHITE LEG is a form of inflammation of the large vein of the leg, sometimes