Feeding and care of baby / by Sir F. Truby King.

  • Truby King
Date:
[1937]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Feeding and care of baby / by Sir F. Truby King. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    “ALLOW 1IER TO BE A WHOLE MOTHER TO HER CHILD. Is it not against Nature, and being only half a mother, to give birth to a child, and then at once to send him away— to have nourished with her own blood and in her own bodv a something that she had never seen, and then to refuse it her own milk now that she sees it living, a human being, demanding a mother’s care? Or are you one of those who think that Nature gave a woman breasts, not that she might feed her children, but as pretty little hillocks to give her bust a pleasing contour? Many, indeed, of our present-day ladies do try to dry up and repress that sacred fount of the body, the nourisher of the human race, even at the risk they run from turning back and corrupting their milk, lest it should take off from the charm of their beauty. ‘ ‘ But it makes no difference—for as they say—so long as the child is nourished and lives, with whose milk it is done. ‘ ‘ Does he who says this, since he is so dull in understanding Nature, think it is also of no consequence in whose womb and from whose blood the child is formed and fashioned! For is there not now in the breasts the same blood which was before in the womb? And is not the wisdom of Nature to be seen in this, that as soon as the blood has done its work of forming the body down below, and the time of birth has come, it betakes itself to the upper parts of the body, and is ready to cherish the spark of life and light by furnishing to the new-born babe his known and accustomed food? “And so it is not an idle belief that, just as the strength and character of the seed have their influence in determining the likeness of the body and mind, so do the nature and properties of the milk do their part in effecting the same results. And this has been noticed not in man alone: in the case of timber and fruit trees, too, the qualities of the water and soil from which they draw their nourishment have more influence in stunting or augmenting their growth than those of the seed which is sown, and often you may see a vigorous and healthy tree when transplanted into another place perish owing to the poverty of the soil. ‘ ‘ Is it, then, a reasonable thing to corrupt the fine qualities of the new-born man, well endowed as to both body and mind so far as parentage is concerned, with the unsuitable nourishment of degenerate and foreign milk? “. . . . And besides these considerations, who can afford to ignore or belittle the fact that those who desert their offspring and send them away from themselves, and make them over to others to nurse, cut, or at least loosen and weaken, that chain and connection of mind and affection by which Nature attaches children to their parents!”
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