The rearing of hand-fed infants : a lecture delivered in the lecture room of the exhibition, August 1st, 1884 / by Edmund Owen ; with an introduction by Charles West.

  • Owen, Edmund.
Date:
1884
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The rearing of hand-fed infants : a lecture delivered in the lecture room of the exhibition, August 1st, 1884 / by Edmund Owen ; with an introduction by Charles West. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    be able to gain its own subsistence and live for its only object, that of perpetuating its species. But in the case of the human being it was far different; the infant had to be trained with care into a man, whose future was not bounded by this world’s horizon ; his moral as well as his physical qualities had to be developed, and it was for that purpose, no doubt, that an all-wise Providence had decreed that the infant should be dependent for a considerable period upon its mother, in order that the child might learn to cling to her through life with an affection which sur- passes all others ; she, on her part, caring for her child with an affection which made her, during all its early years, the child’s best guide, companion, guardian, and friend. A high duty that! A great privilege ! A source of purest joys ! And would they abandon those duties and renounce those golden joys fdr any meaner thing which this world could give them ? Poets had described, painters had depicted, and the very ballad singers in olden times were wont to sing the joys which Mary felt when the blessed Babe was lying in her bosom ; and he was sure the ladies present would not prove her degenerate daughters. They would not renounce those great privileges ; they would not give up those joys in manner like to hers, for they all must love the highest. THE LECTURE. A SHORT lecture on such an important subject as that of the Rearing of Hand-fed Infants will of necessity run the risk of being considered tedious, if only from the amount of dry detail which its consideration must involve; but, what is of greater moment, it will be found unsatisfactory because it must needs be left incomplete. Boyle remarked that the dim and bounded intellect of man seldom prosperously adventures to be dogmatical about things that approach to infinite, whether in vastue.ss