266 Human Physiology. 



perfectly possible to natural and healthy women. Pain and 

 danger come from artificial and diseasing habits and con- 

 ditions. 



When the womb returns to its usual size and condition, the 

 mammary glands take on their full action, and secrete from the 

 blood the natural food of the infant, 

 which it instinctively seeks with eager- 

 ness. These glands vary but little 

 from the others. There is a large sur- 

 face in a small space; a full supply of 

 blood and strong nervous action. The 

 Fi S- 7o- red arterial blood is somehow, by 



MAMMARY GLANDS. nature > s subtle chemistry, converted in- 

 to a white sweet fluid, which contains all the elements of 

 nutrition required by the infant, in just the right proportions 

 provided that the blood of the mother is pure, her nervous 

 powers unexhausted, her system free from the poisons of drugs, 

 or of disease. 



But the mother must be pure and healthful, or she cannot 

 give pure blood or pure milk to her child. The miscroscopic 

 cell generated by the father, and his contribution to the life of 

 the child, may carry with it fatal and terrible diseases. It may 

 have in it the seeds of sensuality or insanity, gout or scrofula, 

 moral and physical deterioration and death. What then must 

 we think of the influence of the mother who not only furnishes 

 the germ, but nourishes it for nine months with her blood, and 

 then a year longer with milk formed from the blood of her 

 bosom ! 



