Obstetrics: the science and the art.

  • Meigs, Charles D. (Charles Delucena), 1792-1869.
Date:
1867
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Obstetrics: the science and the art. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    printed in anotlier work, nor indeed does it require any argument to show that, inasmuch as the 23roportion of oil, casein, albumen, and water in the milk of the different mammiferous creatures varies according to their genus, so the j^oung of each genus is adapted to the reception of the sort of aliment devoted to its generical nature. It is true that a young child who has lost its mother must be fed, and it is better for it to be fed with cow's milk or goat's milk than not at all; but I hold it to be a sacred duty for all those persons whose circumstances admit of it, to provide the new-born child with the milk of a human nurse, and not to expose it to the hazards—I should say the dangerous risks—of distressing illness and impending death, that threaten the great majority of those children that are brought up on the spoon or biberon. The neonatus comes into the world full of instinctive desires; it will take food soon after its birth, and will satisfy its instinctive cravings to absolute satiety. But I beg the Student to remark that, while the Divine Author of nature has ordained that children shall be born, he has also ordained that the plenary abundance of their food shall not, as a general rule, be provided for them until the third day after birth. It is not necessary, therefore, to feed the child as soon as it is washed and dressed ; I look upon it as a direct flying in the face of Providence, as acting in direct contravention to the law of nature, which is but the command of Grod, to fill the stomach of the new-born infant with mixtures of saccharine matter, of gruel, or of the milk of quadrupeds; surely, He who made it knows better its true wants than those who, ignoring his wisdom and fore- sight, make haste to test its digestive powers by these detestable mixtures, instead of waiting the fulness of his own time. I have warned the Student, however, that hereafter he will encounter much trouble and vexation in consequence of the early and improper feeding of infants under his care, and I exhort him by careful con- sideration to inform his mind as to the medical duty in such cases. Pie will never err, he will never go astray as a physician who ascer- tains clearly the physiological laws of the function or functions placed under his surveillance; and he who in his hygienical ordinances is the best expositor of nature's law, will be the safest and most suc- cessful physician; and it is certain that no human sagacity or skill can ever equal the perfection of those operations that are instituted and effected in accordance with the generical nature of the subject of them. It is a mistake, and it is a grave mistake, to suppose that the neona- tus is in danger of starvation because it is kept until the third day on the supply furnished it from the mother's breast alone; for there is