Shut your mouth and save your life / by George Catlin.

  • George Catlin
Date:
1878
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Shut your mouth and save your life / by George Catlin. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    102/114 (page 94)
    habit of sleeping with the month open, and its effects, important to be named. ‘ H’doo-a, h’doo-a, won-cha-ddo-ats ’ (straighten the bush and you will straighten the tree), is a proverb amongst the Indians, older than poetry or blank verse. ‘ Just as the twig is bent, the tree’s inclined.’ In the foregoing pages we have contemplated the Indian mother guarding her infant in its first sleep, and closing its lips to prevent it from contracting a danger- ous habit; and I, who have seen some thousands of Indian women giving the breast to their infants, never saw an Indian mother withdrawing the nipple from the mouth of a young infant, without carefully closing its lips with her fingers ; and for what ? certainly not for her amusement or pleasure, but for the important object which they well understand, and which has been ex- plained. 'But in civilized societies, how often do we see the tender mother (if she gives it the breast at all) lub it to sleep at the breast, and steal the nipple from its