The attitude of mind of a woman toward her milk supply is important, as the flow of milk is closely subject to mental influence. The presence of the child and the consequent exercise of maternal instinct does more to bring about the prompt, healthy flow of milk than anything else. Sometimes women in the later months of their first pregnancy upon seeing a mother nursing her child have felt the flow of milk to their breasts not rarely with such painful overdistention of the milk ducts as to require artificial relief. On the other hand, a fright may stop the flow of milk or make it scanty and a mother's aversion to a child may prevent her being able to nurse it. The sight of the father of the child in a state of intoxication may have a similar result.
How much milk supply may be dependent on the state of mind, or at least the state of the nervous system, can be realized from the animals from which we obtain milk. Any serious disturbance is likely to interfere with the milk supply. When a cow's calf is taken away the animal will often refuse for a time to give milk. If a cow is scared, as by the attack of a wild animal, or by being hit though only slightly injured by an engine, it will often not have milk for several days or even longer. There is an impression prevalent among farmers that if a cow takes a dislike to a particular person they are not likely to "give down" as much milk as would otherwise be the case. This may be only a curious farmer tradition, that has no basis in fact, although it is supported by so many observations reported from many different countries that it is apparently to be taken as of scientific value.
In modern times many fashionable women do not nurse their children because they have not the proper supply of milk. It is easy to see how this can be brought about through suggestion from many sources and the sight of others neglecting their duty in this matter. Most fashionable women would rather not nurse their children, and yet many of them feel a bounden duty in the matter. Some of these, however, having heard that many mothers of the better class are not capable of nursing their children, easily persuade themselves that they come in this category, and so their whole attitude of mind toward nursing is one of extreme doubt. Knowing as we do how the mental state influences nursing we are not surprised when these women prove not to have sufficient milk in the early days of the nursing. If they are to have it they must look forward with confidence to nursing their children and they must be ready and willing to take such food and secure such fresh air as will put them in the best possible condition for this function, always with the thought that nothing can be better for a child than to be nursed by its own mother. Nature has made exactly the form of food suited for the particular child, and it matters not how healthy a wet nurse may be, her milk is not likely to be so suitable. Much depends on the nutrition of the child during this early susceptible period of its life and there is more that passes over with the milk than merely the food elements. It is well recognized now that the reason why nurslings are protected from most of the so-called children's diseases and the contagious diseases generally, is that, as a rule, their mothers [{461}] have had these diseases, have acquired an immunity to them and this immunity is transferred to the child so long as the nursing process is continued. This has been shown to be true over and over again in animals and holds good for human beings.
Professor Von Leyden, the distinguished professor of medicine at the University of Berlin, points out that we are not quite sure as yet just what may happen to the human race from the very general refusal of mothers to nurse their children and the almost universal substitution of the bovine mother; whether in times to come certain bovine traits, at least as regards susceptibility to disease, may not be stamped upon the human race, cannot be determined until this experiment in ethnology, now being conducted on so large a scale, has been carried to some definite conclusion.
Perhaps this view is groundless, but there is no doubt that milk is more than merely a food and that during the period after birth when the child's nervous system is being formed, the perfectly adapted mother's milk is more likely to be the proper food than anything that human ingenuity can elaborate. We have heard much in recent years of the tendency of education and civilization to lower the birth-rate and to make women less fitted for maternity and for such maternal duties as nursing, but stronger than any deterioration of the physical constitution by the mental development is the unfortunate unfavorable effect of mental suggestion upon such functions, by which the preparation of the organism for their fulfillment is greatly influenced. It is in this respect that the women of to-day differ from the woman of the past much more than in mere physical development.
CHAPTER II
MATERNAL IMPRESSIONS
"Maternal impression" is accepted as a specific designation to signify the real or supposed influence of emotion and especially serious trouble, which may affect the mother's mind during pregnancy and be transferred to the child in utero, with the production of deformities or mother's marks. There used to be an almost superstitious belief in the power of the maternal impressions to influence unfavorably the child in utero. With the newer developments as to the influence of the subconscious and subliminal there might well occur in some minds an exaggeration of these ideas with the production of much mental suffering at least, if not of more serious results.
Maternal Impressions in Old Literature.—The belief in the influence of maternal impression on the child in utero is so strongly fixed that to most people it will seem paradoxical to question the whole subject. The evidence for it, however, is quite trivial, and none of it rises above the grade of what may be explained by coincidence. But there are many apparently insuperable difficulties, from the standpoint of our modern scientific knowledge, with regard to the whole subject. If we take up the medical books and the popular science, or rather pseudo-science, and the folk stories of a century ago we find overwhelming evidence for the belief in maternal impressions. More recent [{462}] literature has but few examples, and the more the details are studied the less is the evidence of any kind that the mother's mind influences her unborn child. There is really no more reason why a child should he marked within its mother's womb than that it should be marked while nursing at the breast if something should happen to the mother at that time. This latter effect strikes one at once as absurd; the former, as we shall see, is exactly of the same nature.
Many of the older stories of maternal impressions are reported on no better grounds than the vomiting of snakes and the like, even live mice, which used to be found in old-time medical literature. It is true that there was usually no such morbidity about the stories of maternal impressions, but men wanted to find some explanation for the problem of the occurrence of deformities and markings and the maternal impression idea seemed satisfactory and inviting by its very mystery. The belief that animals could live for some time in human stomachs is now relegated to the limbo of old-time credulous traditions. Maternal impressions are on the same path and in twenty-five years they will be as great curiosities in serious medical literature as the gastric fauna of two generations ago. Under these circumstances prospective mothers who are anxious over possibilities and who have dreads of all kinds about their unborn children should be reassured and informed as to the scientific status of this important question.
Mother and Child Distinct Beings.—There is no direct connection between the mother and her unborn babe. No nerves run in the cord and none pass from the uterine tissues to the placenta. It is easy to understand the influence of mind on body under ordinary circumstances, at least the mystery has a rational explanation. The central nervous system rules the nutrition of the body. To cut off the nerve supply has as serious an effect as to cut off the blood supply. Owing to the existence of a chain of neurons, that is, a succession of nervous elements, instead of one continuous nerve fiber from center to periphery, it is possible for one of the neurons of the chain to be so disturbed that the conducting apparatus is interrupted and impulses do not flow. Hence, if a strong impression is produced on the mind with regard to a particular part of the body the neurons leading to it may be so disturbed that trophic nerve impulses do not flow down, the blood supply of the part may be disturbed through the vaso-motor system and consequent changes may take place.