HISTORY OF PEDIATRICS 513 



Amongst those who believe in the omnipotence of chemical for- 

 mulae, there prevails the opinion that a baby deprived of mother's 

 milk may just as readily be brought up on cow's milk; that is easily 

 disproved. In Berlin they found that amongst the cows'-milk fed 

 babies under a year the mortality was six times as great as amongst 

 breast-fed infants. Our own great cities gave us similar or slightly 

 smaller proportions until the excessive mortality of the very young 

 was somewhat reduced by the care bestowed on the milk, introduced 

 both into our palaces and tenements. Milk was examined for bacteria, 

 cleanliness, and chemical reaction. It was sterilized, pasteurized, 

 modified, cooled, but no cow's milk was ever under the laws of nature 

 changed into human milk, and with better milk than the city of New 

 York ever had, its infant mortality was greater this summer than it 

 has been in many years. 



That hundreds of thousands of the newly-born and small infants 

 perish every year on account of the absence of their natural food is 

 a fact which is known and which should not exist. Why do we kill 

 those babies or allow them to be killed? Why is it that they have no 

 breast-milk? A large number of women work in fields, still more in 

 factories. That is why their infants cannot be nursed, are farmed 

 out, fed artificially, with care, or without it, and die. It is the misrule 

 prevailing in our social conditions which compels them to withhold 

 milk from the infant while they are working for what is called bread 

 for themselves and their families. Many of these women, it is true, 

 would not have been able to nurse their newly-born, for their own 

 physical condition was always incompetent. The same may be said 

 of women in all walks of life. Insufficient food, hard work, care, 

 hereditary debility and disease, tuberculosis, alcoholism of the 

 woman's own father, modified syphilis or nervous diseases in the 

 family --aye, the inability of her own mother to nurse her babies, 

 are ever so many causes why the mother's fountain should run dry. 

 Statistics from large obstetrical institutions (Hegar) prove that 

 only about 50 % of women are capable of nursing their offspring for 

 merely a few weeks. In the presence of such facts what are we to say 

 of the refusal of well-situated and physically competent women to 

 nurse their infants? I do not speak of the "400," I mean the 400,000 

 who prefer their ease to their duty, their social functions to their 

 maternal obligations, who hire strangers to nurse their babies, or 

 worse yet, who make-believe they believe the claims of the infant- 

 food manufacturers, or are tempted by their own physicians to 

 believe that cow's milk casein and cow's milk fat may be changed 



new. Regulations were given in Venice, 1599, for the sale of milk. Milk and its 

 products of diseased animals were forbidden. The Paris municipality of 1792 

 enjoined the farmers to give their cows healthy food. Coloring and dilution of 

 milk were strictly forbidden, and in 1792 they knew in France how to punish 

 transgressors. 



