Feeding and care of baby / by F. Truby King, issued by the Royal New Zealand Society for the Health of Women & Children (Incorporated).

  • Truby King
Date:
1925
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Feeding and care of baby / by F. Truby King, issued by the Royal New Zealand Society for the Health of Women & Children (Incorporated). Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Natural Feeding. Accuse not Nature, she hath done her part: Do thou but thine.—HILTON. A woman’s milk is not her own. It is created for the baby, and the first duty of the mother is to ensure, by foresight, a proper supply of the only perfect food —the baby’s birthright. There is a special and intimate relationship between the milk of the mother and the digestive and nutritive needs of her own offspring. If two women inter¬ change thriving babies, of the same age, both infants are liable to suffer from Indigestion. Hence every mother should, if possible, fulfil her maternal duties. Effect on Mothers. The suckling of the baby is almost as important for the future health and well-being of the mother as it is for the infant. Not only does nursing foster the highest development of maternal love and devotion, but it also tends to ensure a rapid shrinkage of the enormously congested womb to its natural size and weight. After the baby is born, the main blood current, which has been circulating through the mother’s pelvic organs, should be diverted to the breasts. By thwarting this natural transfer, failure to suckle the baby causes more or less persistent pelvic congestion, and thus gives rise to the distortions, displacements, and other disabilities of married women, which so often undermine the health and call for operation later on. N.B.—The other leading cause of displacements is the hindering of free movement, and the pressure on chest and abdomen, brought about by wearing corsets from girlhood onwards. This, with lack of open- air exercise, is the main factor in the ill-health of modern women, whether married or single. The Corset. For over a quarter of a century Sir Frederick Treves and other leading English surgeons and physicians have been inveighing against the wearing of corsets, and have shown conclusively the disastrous train of evils that women impose on themselves and their progeny by this means. The following are condensed extracts from the highest English, foreign, and American authorities :— “Are stays a necessity?” Many women assert they derive great comfort from stays, that they support the body admirably, and that without them the wearer feels inclined to “drop to pieces. Do they mean for one moment to assert that the human body is so ill- constructed and so badly adapted for its purpose in life that it has to depend for its integrity upon the productions of a corset-maker? Such an assumption is simply outrageous, the true explanation being that by the persistent use of stays the muscles of the back have become so enfeebled (from prolonged disuse) that they are no longer able to support the spine. Under no circumstances does a young girl require stays of any kind, and in the majority of young women they are equally needless and almost equally injurious. One sometimes hears the remark tliat a young girl who is growing rapidly requires some support for her back, and it
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