MISS ALICE GREGORY'S PAPER 279 



almost as perilous for them to use them as to leave 

 them alone. 



But it is not only during pregnancy and labour 

 that the skill and wisdom of our midwives have been 

 proved so criminally defective. Their lack of know- 

 ledge how to regulate the affairs of both their patients, 

 large and small, during the puerperium, has probably 

 given rise to more illness and discomfort in the 

 mothers, and more loss of life in the infants, than 

 even in the earlier stages. 



Infant-feeding is a very large chapter in itself, 

 and cannot be satisfactorily disposed of by the old 

 axiom : the breast, full or empty, and as the only 

 alternative, milk and barley-water. How to recognize 

 an empty breast (the opinion of the mother herself is 

 a very poor guide). How to encourage milk pro- 

 duction. How to recognize if the infant is thriving ; 

 if the reverse, what is the cause of the failure. These 

 are all points on which careful teaching is needed. 

 The midwife is of necessity the person who will first 

 regulate the conditions of each little new life among 

 our working folk. If she has made a real study, both 

 of infant-feeding and also the idiosyncrasies of infant 

 digestion, she will be in a position to judge whether 

 the mother can nurse entirely, partially, or not at all. 

 If the latter, whether each individual child under her 

 care shall be fed with whey, whey and cream, pepto- 

 genic milk, pasteurized milk, Cautley's top-milk, Tru- 

 milk ; in what quantity and for how long. She will 

 realize that she may have to reverse her treatment at 

 a moment's notice if unfavourable symptoms should 

 arise ; that constipation and diarrhoea alike denote 

 errors in feeding, and that for the former, at any rate, 

 an altered dietary is the remedy, and not the barbaric 

 old custom of deranging an infant's digestive appa- 

 ratus with strong aperients ; that if the diarrhoea 

 persists a doctor must immediately be sent for. All 

 these matters are not learnt in a day, and our Conti- 

 nental neighbours France, Holland, Belgium, Italy 



