Chavasse's advice to a wife : on the management of her own health and on the treatment of some of the complaints incidental to pregnancy, labour, and suckling.

  • Q52148313
Date:
[1898?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Chavasse's advice to a wife : on the management of her own health and on the treatment of some of the complaints incidental to pregnancy, labour, and suckling. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    these plans will make him take a dislike to the breast, and thus the weaning will be accomplished. Wormwood is excessively bitter and disagreeable, and a slight quantity of it on the nipple will cause an infant to turn away from it in loathing and disgust—the wormwood, the minute quantity he will taste, will not at all injure him. Wormwood was in olden time used for the purpose of weaning— “ And she was weaned,—I never shall forget it— Of all the days of the year upon that day: For I had then laid wormwood to my dug [nipple], Sitting in the sun under the dove-house wall, My lord and you were then at Mantua:— Nay, I do bear a brain: but, as I said, When it did taste the wormwood on the nipple Of my dug, and felt it bitter, pretty fool! To see it tetchy, and fall out with the dug.” Shakspeare. 922. The best way of “drying up the milk ” is to apply to each breast soap-plaster (emplastrum saponis), spread on soft pieces of wash-leather, the shape and size of the top of a hat, with a round hole the size of a shilling in the middle of each to admit the nipple, and with a slit from the centre to the circumference of each plaster to make a better fit. These plasters ought to be spread by a chemist. Emplastrum belladonnse or belladonna plaster is also useful in dispersing milk. The plasters should be perforated in the centre to allow the nipple to come through. 923. When the child is once weaned, the breasts ought not to be drawn, as the drawing of them would cause them to secrete larger quantities of milk: if, therefore, the bosoms be ever so full or uncomfortable, a mother ought to leave them alone; she should wait patiently, and the milk will gradually diminish, and will at length disappear. 924. The drawing of the bosoms, during weaning, by means of a breast-pump, or by the mouth, or by other like contrivances, has frequently caused gathered breasts.