174
Counsels on Diet and Foods
Nor is this all. She also imparts her temper and her temperament
to the nursing child. The child’s life is linked to hers. If the hireling
is a coarse type of woman, passionate and unreasonable; if she is not
careful in her morals, the nursling will be, in all probability, of the
same or similar type. The same coarse quality of blood, coursing in
the veins of the hireling nurse, is in that of the child. Mothers who
will thus turn their children from their arms, and refuse the maternal
duties, because they are a burden which they cannot well sustain, while
devoting their lives to fashion, are unworthy the name of mother. They
degrade the noble instincts and holy attributes of women, and choose
to be butterflies of fashionable pleasure, having less sense of their
responsibility to their posterity than the dumb brutes. Many mothers
substitute the bottle for the breast. This is necessary because they
have not nourishment for their children. But in nine cases out of ten
their wrong habits of dressing, and of eating from their youth, have
brought upon them inability to perform the duties nature designed they
should....
It ever has appeared to me to be cold, heartless business for mothers
who can nurse their children to turn them from the maternal breast to
the bottle. In that case, the greatest care is necessary to have the milk
from a healthy cow, and to have the bottle, as well as the milk, perfectly
sweet. This is frequently neglected, and as the result, the infant is
made to suffer needlessly. Disturbances of the stomach and bowels are
liable to occur, and the much-to-be-pitied infant becomes diseased, if
it were healthy when born.—
The Health Reformer, September, 1871
[228]
342. The period in which the infant receives its nourishment from
the mother, is critical. Many mothers, while nursing their infants,
have been permitted to overlabor, and to heat their blood in cooking,
and the nursling has been seriously affected, not only with fevered
nourishment from the mother’s breast, but its blood has been poisoned
by the unhealthy diet of the mother, which has fevered her whole
system, thereby affecting the food of the infant. The infant will also be
affected by the condition of the mother’s mind. If she is unhappy, easily
agitated, irritable, giving vent to outbursts of passion, the nourishment
the infant receives from its mother will be inflamed, often producing
colic, spasms, and, in some instances, causing convulsions and fits.
The character also of the child is more or less affected by the nature
of the nourishment received from the mother. How important then that