The relative influences of maternal and wet-nursing on mother and child / by Joseph Edcil Winters.

  • Winters, Joseph Edcil, -1922.
Date:
1886
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The relative influences of maternal and wet-nursing on mother and child / by Joseph Edcil Winters. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    shall we recommend it to the perilous care of that most remarkable and incomprehensible of creatures, the wet- nurse ; or shall we have recourse to that method over which we have complete control, of which we can have no distrust, and which involves no hidden ways—hand- feeding ? In New York physicians generally recommend the former. Wet-nursing is a many-sided subject, and it has not re- ceived that conscientious consideration which its impor- tance demands. In the first place, the employment of a wet-nurse, and the consequent desertion of two children by their proper mothers, is the main cause of the high rate of infant mortality. Wet-nursing, in its influence on infant mortality, is a two-edged sword, as the probability of death during the first year of life is materially increased in both the foster- and the wet-nurse’s child. One would naturally suppose that the health and life of an in- fant would be equally safe, whether nursed by its own mother or by a healthy wet-nurse; but the following pages will show that this is not the case. Mortality among maternal atid wet-nursed childreti. Below will be seen the results of maternal versus wet- nursing in 422 infants, covering a period of five years ; Mortality among infants nourished by mother, 16 in 100 : mortality among infants nourished by wet-nurse in fam- ily, 28 in 100.’ Later observations, from 1872 to 1879, on 600 infants ; Mortality among infants nursed by mother, 10 in 100 ; mortality among infants nursed by wet-nurse in family, 26 in loo.’ In Montpellier, France : Mortality among children nursed by mother, 10 in too ; mortality among children nursed by wet-nurse in family, 15 in 100. Siissmilch says that the mortality among children * Bull. Acad, de Mdd. de Paris, 1880 (ad series), vol. ix., p. 571. * Ibid., 1880 (ad series), vol. ix. 3 De rAlimentation Vicieuse dans ses Rapports avec la Mortality de la premiire enfance, p. 36. Montpellier, 1878.