Advice to a wife and mother in two parts

by Pye Henry Chavasse

710. The “wet compress” is another excellent method of opening the bowels. The way of applying it is as follows: Fold a large napkin a few thicknesses until it is about half a foot square; then dip it in cold water and place it over the bowels; over which apply either oilskin or gutta-percha skin, which should be, in order to exclude the air, considerably larger than the folded napkin. It should be kept in its place by means of either a bolster-case or a broad bandage, and must be applied at bedtime, and ought to remain on for three or four hours, or until the bowels be opened.

711. Let me again—for it cannot be too urgently insisted upon—strongly advise a nursing mother to use every means in the way of diet, etc., to supersede the necessity of the taking of opening medicine, as the repetition of aperients injures, and that severely, both mother and child. Moreover, the more opening medicine a person swallows, the more she requires; so that if she once get into the habit of regularly taking aperients, the bowels will not act without them. What a miserable existence, to be always swallowing physic!

712. If a lady, then, during the period of suckling, were to take systematic exercise in the open air; to bustle about the house and to attend to her household duties; if she were to drink, the moment she awakes in the morning, a tumbler of cold water, and every day during dinner a glass of sherry; if she were to substitute brown bread for white bread, and coffee for tea at breakfast, and brown for white sugar; if she were to vary her food, both animal and vegetable, and partake plentifully of sound ripe fruit; if she were to use an abundance of cold water to her skin; if she were, occasionally, at bedtime, to apply a “wet compress” to her bowels, and to visit the water-closet daily at one hour; if she were—even if the bowels were not opened for four or five days—not to take an aperient of any kind whatever, and avoid quacking herself with physic; in short, if she would adopt the above safe and simple remedies, which are in the reach of all, she would not suffer so much from costiveness, which is frequently the bane, the misery, and the curse of her existence! But then, to get the bowels into a proper and healthy state, it would take both time and trouble; and how readily can a couple of pills be swallowed, and how quickly they act, and how soon they have to be repeated; until at length the bowels will not act at all unless goaded into action, and the pills become a necessity! Oh, the folly and the mischief of such a system!

WEANING.

713. There is an old saying, “that a woman should carry her child nine months, and should suckle him nine months.” It is well known that the first part of the old adage is correct, and experience has proved the latter to be equally so. If a babe be weaned before he be nine months, he loses that muscular strength which the breast-milk alone can give; if he be suckled after he be nine months, he becomes flabby, weak, and delicate. “It is generally recognized that the healthiest children are those weaned at nine months complete. Prolonged nursing hurts both child and mother; in the child, causing a tendency to brain disease, probably through disordered digestion and nutrition; in the mother, causing a strong tendency to deafness and blindness. It is a very singular fact, to which it is desirable that attention were paid, that in those districts of Scotland—viz., the Highland and insular—where the mothers suckle their infants from fourteen to eighteen months, deaf-dumbness and blindness prevail to a very much larger extent among the people than in districts where nine or ten months is the usual limit of the nursing period.”[^[125]]

714. The time, then, when an infant ought to be weaned.—“This, of course, must depend upon the strength of the child, and upon the health of the mother: nine months on an average is the proper time. If she be delicate, it may be found necessary to wean him at six months; or if he be weak, or laboring under any disease, it may be well to continue suckling him for twelve months; but after that time the breast will do him more harm than good, and will, moreover, injure the mother’s health.”[^[126]]

715. If he be suckled after he be twelve months old, he is generally pale, flabby, unhealthy, and rickety; and the mother is usually nervous, emaciated, and hysterical. A child who is suckled beyond the proper time, more especially if there be any predisposition, sometimes dies either of water on the brain, or of consumption of the lungs, or of mesenteric disease.

716. The manner in which a mother ought to act when she weans her child.—“She must, as the word signifies, do it gradually—that is to say, she should by degrees give him less and less of the breast, and more and more of artificial food; she ought, at length, only to suckle him at night; and lastly, it would be well for the mother either to send him away, or to leave him at home, and for a few days to go away herself.”[^[127]]

717. “A good plan is for the nurse to have in the bed a half-pint bottle of new milk, which, to prevent it from turning sour, has been previously boiled, so as to give a little to the child in lieu of the breast. The warmth of the body will keep the milk of a proper temperature; and will supersede the use of lamps, of candle-frames, and other troublesome contrivances.”[^[128]]

718. If the mother be not able to leave home herself, or to send her child from home, she ought then to let the child sleep in another room, with some responsible person—I say responsible person, for a baby must not be left to the tender mercies of a giggling, thoughtless young girl.