WOMAN’S MILK.
Woman’s milk mitigated redness of eyes and inflammation of the lachrymal glands; it should be used with vitriol. For “gutta serena” it was applied as an ointment; in cases of atrophy it was regarded by many as of commendable utility, especially if drawn from the woman’s breast; the same treatment was a specific in obstinate hiccough.
A butter prepared from woman’s milk was used in diseases of children, especially colic, and in ocular affections. (See Flemming, “De Remediis,” etc., p. 18.) Its remedial efficacy forms the basis of Pliny’s c. 21, lib. xxviii.; if possible, it should be that of a woman who had just borne male twins. “If a person is rubbed at the same time with the milk of both mother and daughter, he will be proof for all the rest of his life against all affections of the eyes.... Mixed with the urine of a youth who has not yet arrived at puberty, it removes ringing in the ears.”—(Idem.)
“Matricis vulneribus confert ... lac mulieris.”—(Avicenna, vol. i. p. 337, a 36.)
The Empress of China took the milk of sixty wet nurses to keep herself alive, according to Mr. Frank G. Carpenter.
Woman’s milk is still used in the rude trephining of the African Kabyles as a dressing.—(See “Prehistoric Trephining,” by Dr. Robert Fletcher, in vol. v. “Contributions to North American Ethnology,” Washington, D. C., 1882.)