The care of infants : a manual for mothers and nurses / by Sophia Jex-Blake.

  • Sophia Jex-Blake
Date:
1903
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The care of infants : a manual for mothers and nurses / by Sophia Jex-Blake. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    34/136 (page 14)
    [chap. child; for it is beyond question that the latter may probably die if deprived of its breast-milk, and left to such care as is common in the class to which it belongs; and thus the life of one baby may be in all probability exchanged for that of the other. I suppose that the really righteous arrangement would be to allow the wet-nurse to bring her own baby with her, and to share her milk between the two; supplying any deficiency by giving each baby a little diluted cow’s milk in addition. This was the plan adopted at the ]\Iassachusetts Infant Asylum, when it was found from experience that no care could prevent a very large mortality when infants were brought up “ by hand” only. All the more delicate babies were given a share of breast-milk, while the wet-nurse’s own child was never entirely deprived of its pro- j)er nourishment. Under these arrangements the number of deaths decreased enormously, and dur- ing 1883 they amounted to less than 11 per cent, a result on which the managers may cer- tainly be congratulated.^ It may be worthy of record that this asylum was started chiefly by the exertions of Dr. Lucy Sewall, in 1867, in consequence of the great mortality found to occur among the children born in the New England Hospital for Women and Children, soon after they left that institution. 1 Seventeenth Annual Report of Massachusetts Infant Asylum, 1884, Boston, U.S.A.