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.

    54/136 (page 34)
    see this practically illustrated every day in the lanes and back streets of our towns, where bowed and distorted limbs (“ bandy legs ”) are so sadly common, but the fact has been proved to demon- stration by a most interesting series of experiments conducted by Mons. Jules Guerin in France,^ He found tliat children suffering from this disease had almost invariably been deprived of milk; and he then proved experimentally that the disease could actually be created at will in the lower animals, by simply depriving the young of their mother’s milk, and giving them the food that would have been proper for their parents. He took puppies, as specimens of carnivorous animals, and fed them on meat; and young pigs, as representing the herbivora, and fed them on vegetables, and in each case rickety softening of the bones was produced, with the accompanying bowing and distortion with which we are so sadly familiar. Unfortunately the same experiment is being daily made—ignorantly and unconsciously—with the young human animal, and the result is not dissimilar. ^ Manual of Did, hy Dr. King Chambers, Smith, Elder, and Co.