Domestic medicine; or, A treatise on the prevention and cure of diseases by regimen and simple medicines ; With an appendix containing a dispensatory. For the use of private practitioners / by William Buchan.

  • Buchan, William, 1729-1805.
Date:
1774
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Domestic medicine; or, A treatise on the prevention and cure of diseases by regimen and simple medicines ; With an appendix containing a dispensatory. For the use of private practitioners / by William Buchan. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    40/792 (page 4)
    A mother who abandons the fruit of her womb, as foon as it is born, to the foie care of an hireling, hardly deferves that name. A child, by being brought up. under the mother’s eye, not only feeures her affedlion, but may reap all the advantages of a mother’s care, though it be fuckied by another* How can a mother be.better employed than in fuper- intending the nurfery ? This is at once the mo ft delightful and important office! yet the moil trivial bufmefs or infipid amufements are often preferred to it. A ftrong proof both of the bad tafte and wrong education of modern females. It is indeed to be regretted, that more care is not bellowed in teaching the proper management of chil¬ dren to thofe whom nature has deligned for mothers. This, inftead of being made a principal, is feldom confidered as any part of female education. Is it any wonder, when females, fo educated, come to be mothers, that they ffiould be quite ignorant of the duties belonging to that character ? However ftrange it may appear, it is certainly true, that many mothers, and thofe of faffiion too, are as ignorant, when they have brought a child into the world, what to do for fe, as the infant itfelf. Indeed, the molt ignorant of the fex are generally reckoned rnoft knowing in the bufinefs of nurfing. Hence, fenfible people become the dupes of ignorance and fuperftition; and the nurfing of children, inftead of being conduced by reafon, is the refult of whim and caprice *« Were * Tacitus, the celebrated Roman hiftorian, complains greatly of the degeneracy of the Roman ladies in his time, with regard to the care of their offspring. He fays that, in former times, the greateft: women