Essays in scientific synthesis / by Eugenio Rignano.

  • Eugenio Rignano
Date:
[1918]
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: Essays in scientific synthesis / by Eugenio Rignano. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    bottom merely her attachment to a house to which she And so with the brooding of birds and of certain reptiles, which at first is due to the pleasant sensation which the cool contact of the eggs gives to the feverish condition accompanying the generative functions, but which by habit has become in itself an instinctive affectivity.3 Finally, as far as lactation is concerned, the young, by sucking the secretions of the perspiratory glands on the breast of the brooding mother, have gradually transformed the latter into lactiferous glands, and they have so accustomed the mother to this sucking, that a genuine and characteristic need to be sucked has arisen. “ In mammals it is in the phenomena of lactation that we must look for the origin of the symbiotic relations uniting mother and child. The physiological disorders of pregnancy and parturition lead, among other very curious trophic effects, to a hyper-secretion of the mammary glands, which are, as we know, only a special¬ ized localization of the sebaceous glands of the skin. The young animal licks and sucks this secretion, which is its first food, and alleviates the discomfort of the mother, thus becoming a means to her comfort/' 3 That the need for lactation is the origin of maternal love is seen from the fact that if she is deprived of her offspring she will feel the need of finding foster-nurs¬ lings. “ The necessity of getting rid of a troublesome 1 Lécaillon, Sur la biologie et la -psychologie cVune araignée, “Année psychologique,” ioth year, Paris, Masson, 1904, pp. 63-83. 2 A. Giard, op. cit., p. 226. 3 Ibid., pp. 269-70.
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