The relative influences of maternal and wet-nursing on mother and child / by Joseph Edcil Winters.

  • Winters, Joseph Edcil, -1922.
Date:
1886
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The relative influences of maternal and wet-nursing on mother and child / by Joseph Edcil Winters. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    THE RELATIVE INFLUENCES OF MATERNAL AND WET-NURSING ON MOTHER AND CHILD.* Nature has so manifestly declared what should be the food of infants that one might suppose that there would be no occasion for writing on the subject. The theories of man, however, have so far superseded the natural mode of feeding that it has become a ques- tion of great practical importance to every practising physician how to feed a baby. The reports of the Bureau of Vital Statistics for New York alone prove that the present modes of infant feed- ing are grievously, calamitously wrong. Of 35,682 deaths in New York City during the year 1885, 9,303, or nearly one-fourth, occurred in the first twelve months of life ! During the same year there were, exclusive of still-births, 30,030 children born. The deaths in infants less than one year old were equal, therefore, to nearly one-third of the number of births. If we inquire into this mortality, we find it chiefly traceable to faulty feeding. If such mortality arose from epidemic influences, there would be immediate and im- portunate demands for health boards or some organized exertion to check it. But an unnatural and unjustifiable system of infant feeding, which yearly sacrifices thousands of infants, excites but little comment—moreover, it is en- couraged by a large number of the medical profession. In the following pages I propose to show that every attempt to depart from maternal suckling, eve7i when a hired breast is resorted to, increases infant mortality. * Read before the Section of Obstetrics and Diseases of Women and Children, New York Academy of Medicine, October 28, 1886.