The ill effects upon the infant.—­There is another and equally powerful reason why the child should be weaned, or rather, have a young and healthy wet-nurse, if practicable.  The effects upon the infant, suckled under such circumstances, will be most serious.  Born in perfect health, it will now begin to fall off in its appearance, for the mother’s milk will be no longer competent to afford it due nourishment; it will be inadequate in quantity and quality.  Its countenance, therefore, will become pale; its look sickly and aged; the flesh soft and flabby; the limbs emaciated; the belly, in some cases, large, in others, shrunk; and the evacuations fetid and unnatural; and in a very few weeks, the blooming healthy child will be changed into the pale, sickly, peevish, wasted creature, whose life appears hardly desirable.

The only measure that can save the life, and recover an infant from this state, is that which would previously have prevented it a healthy wet-nurse.

If the effects upon the infant should not be so aggravated as those just described, and it subsequently live and thrive, there will be a tendency in such a constitution to scrofula and consumption, to manifest itself at some future period of life, undoubtedly acquired from the parent, and dependent upon the impaired state of her health at the time of its suckling.  A wet-nurse early resorted to, will prevent this.

It will be naturally asked, for how long a period a mother ought to perform the office of a nurse?  No specific time can be mentioned, and the only way in which the question can be met is this:  no woman, with advantage to her own health, can suckle her infant beyond twelve or eighteen months; and at various periods between the third and twelfth month, many women will be obliged partially or entirely to resign the office.[FN#4]

[FN#4] See “Weaning,” p. 51.

The monthly periods generally reappear from the twelfth to the fourteenth month from delivery; and when established, as the milk is found invariably to diminish in quantity, and also to deteriorate in quality, and the child is but imperfectly nourished, it is positively necessary in such instances at once to wean it.

OF MOTHERS WHO OUGHT NEVER TO SUCKLE.

There are some females who ought never to undertake the office of suckling, both on account of their own health, and also that of their offspring.

The woman of A consumptive and strumous constitution ought not.—­In the infant born of such a parent there will be a constitutional predisposition to the same disease; and, if it is nourished from her system, this hereditary predisposition will be confirmed.