Stories of a country doctor / by Willis P. King.

  • King, Willis P., 1839-1909.
Date:
1890,
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Stories of a country doctor / by Willis P. King. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    an unfailing remedy—one which, if it does no good will do no harm. : It is astounding what influence those women often acquire over families, and more especially over young mothers. They say “she is anold lady an’ knows more about babies than the doctors; what does a man know about a baby, or about a woman either?” The habit of those women of dosing new born babes with saffron tea (a mean, unwashable sort of veg- etable yellow dye) and cat nip (good for cats, no doubt) and giving them fat meat and “sugar teats’? to suck deserves the deepest condemnation. Iam sorry to say that many weak kneed and careless physicians permit these atrocities against the weak and helpless, new born thing. I never do. So long as midwife or nurse obeys my orders and does as I direct, she is my friend, and wil] meet with nothing but gentleness and kindness from me; but, whenever she invades the domain of what strictly belongs to me, and ‘takes the bits in her teeth ” and proposes to do as. she pleases she will find me as relentless as a Comanche Indian. Human life is a precious thing, whether it be the life of the babe, the belle or the octogenarian, and the physician who permits the life which has been placed in his special care and keeping, to be lightly dealt with by others, has not learned all that he ought to know. There are nurses and ‘“nusses.” A good nurse who knows her duties and who implicitly obeys the di- rections of the physician is a “ pearl of great price.’ The self appointed “ nuss ” who thinks she knows more than
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