[17] Even the influence of CHRISTIAN principles has not been able to put a stop to the mortality introduced among the Indians, by their intercourse with the Europeans. Dr. Cotton Mather, in a letter to sir William Ashurst, printed in Boston, in the year 1705, says, “that about five years before there were about thirty Indian congregations in the southern parts of the province of Massachusetts-Bay.” The same author, in his history of New-England, says, “That in the islands of Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard, there were 3000 adult Indians, 1600 of whom professed the christian religion.” At present there is but one Indian congregation in the whole Massachusetts province.
It may serve to extend our knowledge of diseases, to remark, that epidemics were often observed to prevail among the Indians in Nantucket, without affecting the white people.
[18] It is said, there are seldom less than 20,000 British subjects in France and Italy; one half of whom reside or travel in those countries upon the account of their health.
[19] Templeman computes, that Scotland contains 1,500,000 inhabitants; 100,000 of whom, according to Mr. Fletcher, are supported at the public expence. The proportion of poor people is much greater in England, Ireland, France, and Italy.
[20] In the enervated age of Athens, a law was passed which confined the practice of midwifery only to the men. It was, however, repealed, upon a woman's dying in childbirth, rather than be delivered by a man-midwife. It appears from the bills of mortality in London and Dublin, that about one in seventy of those women die in childbirth, who are in the hands of midwives; but from the accounts of the lying-in hospitals in those cities, which are under the care of man-midwives, only one in a hundred and forty perishes in childbirth.
[21] There has been much common-place declamation against the custom among the great, of not suckling their children. Nurses were common in Rome, in the declension of the empire: hence we find Cornelia commended as a rare example of maternal virtue, as much for suckling her sons, as for teaching them eloquence. That nurses were common in Egypt, is probable from the contract which Pharaoh's daughter made with the unknown mother of Moses, to allow her wages for suckling her own child. The same degrees of civilization require the same customs. A woman whose times for eating and sleeping are constantly interrupted by the calls of enervating pleasures, must always afford milk of an unwholesome nature. It may truly be said of a child doomed to live on this aliment, that, as soon as it receives its
———“breath,
It sucks in “the lurking principles of death.”
[22] “Aurengezebe, emperor of Persia, being asked, Why he did not build hospitals? said, I will make my empire so rich, that there shall be no need of hospitals. He ought to have said, I will begin by rendering my subjects rich, and then I will build hospitals.
“At Rome, the hospitals place every one at his ease, except those who labour, those who are industrious, those who have lands, and those who are engaged in trade.
“I have observed, that wealthy nations have need of hospitals, because fortune subjects them to a thousand accidents; but it is plain, that transient assistances are better than perpetual foundations. The evil is momentary; it is necessary, therefore, that the succour should be of the same nature, and that it be applied to particular accidents.” Spirit of Laws, b. xxiii. ch. 29.