CHAPTER III.
On the various Diseases which frequently arise in Children from Lactation, especially when protracted.
Having thus briefly considered some of the disorders to which women are subjected by performing the first duty imposed upon them as mothers, I shall next advert to those which are very frequently observed in their children from being suckled during too long a period; or in consequence of the nurse's milk becoming either simply impoverished, or of a positively injurious quality.
These diseases are numerous, and some of them serious, among which may be enumerated the following; namely, vomiting, diarrhœa, general debility, scrofula, tabes mesenterica,—rickets, convulsions, epilepsy,—and lastly meningitis, or that peculiar inflammation of the investing membranes of the brain which gives rise to the effusion of serum, constituting the well known and very fatal disease termed by medical practitioners Hydrocephalus, or Hydrencephalus, and popularly Water on the Brain.
The disease last mentioned being by far the most important, and that chiefly referred to in the following observations, I shall commence with a brief statement of the conclusions which my experience has led me to form respecting it; they are the same I made public four years ago[E], having since that time seen no reason to make any alteration in them. I believe,
1st,—That if children be suckled for an undue length of time[F], they will be liable in consequence to be affected with meningitis[G], or inflammation of the investing membranes of the brain.
2dly,—That should they not become affected with the disorder in question during or soon after the time they are thus improperly suckled, they will nevertheless acquire therefrom a predisposition to cephalic disease at some future period of their lives.
3dly,—That children who are suckled for an undue length of time, when labouring under other diseases, will be much more liable to have the head secondarily affected, than children brought up in a different manner.