BREAST-FEEDING 149 



I deliver must suckle while in hospital. When she leaves the 

 clinic she is usually both willing and able to nurse/ Thiemich 

 says : ' It happens so rarely that the breast of a lying-in woman 

 gives no secretion that it plays no part in practice. . . . 

 Sometimes it may be 48 hours after birth before practically 

 any colostrum can be pressed out of the breast, and yet after a 

 little while the secretion of milk reaches a satisfactory height, if 

 the child is put to the breast regularly and sucks strongly.' 1 On 

 February 5, 1914, Professor Pinard stated to the French Academy 

 of Medicine that out of 12,000 cases of confinement which had 

 occurred in the hospitals in Paris in the previous five months, there 

 had been none in which lactation had not been possible. He 

 added that he regarded a lying-in woman who had no milk as 

 being an abnormal person. 



An important factor appears to lie in the infant itself. The 

 response of the gland varies with the stimulus given to it by suck- 

 ling, and if the infant be feeble the stimulus may not be great 

 enough adequately to establish the function of lactation, which 

 is thus retarded. This difficulty, unless overcome, will probably 

 lead to the abandonment of breast-feeding. The strength of 

 stimulus can easily be improved either by temporarily supple- 

 menting the feeding or by allowing a stronger child to supply 

 the necessary increased stimulus. 2 



There is no reason to suppose that the capacity for the establish- 

 ment of lactation among Englishwomen is less than that among 

 the women of countries quoted above. The information as to the 

 method of feeding which is obtained in numerous towns throughout 

 this country by the municipal health visitors shows that it is by 

 no means unusual to find that 80 per cent, or more of the women 

 nurse their babies for at least the first fortnight after birth, within 

 which period the visit by the health visitor is paid.* The figures 

 given do not show the extent of the capacity for breast-feeding, 

 as some mothers have already put the child on the bottle, before 

 the advent of the health visitor, in spite of the presence of plenty 

 of milk in the gland. Further, there are some women who make 

 no effort to secure the establishment of lactation, as they do not 

 wish to suckle the baby. If the value of natural feeding were 

 realised it can hardly be doubted that the capacity for breast- 

 feeding would be found to be practically universal among the 

 women of England. Thus the Inspector of Midwives for 

 Northamptonshire says : 



' The important matter of breast-feeding has been kept well 

 before the midwives, and, from inquiries made, I find that out of 

 1854 live births occurring in their practice, 1799 were breast-fed 



1 Cp. also Engel (i). 



2 Cp. Rietschel, Cameron, and others. 



p. Annual Report of M.O.H. for Newcastle, Coventry, and many 



others. 



