22 THE COMMON SENSE OF THE MILK QUESTION 



increasing among all classes, but mainly among the 

 well-to-do and leisured classes. Of the well-to-do 

 and cultured, he tells us, not more than twenty-five per 

 cent of those who have earnestly and intelligently at- 

 tempted to nurse have succeeded in doing so for as long 

 as three months. "An intellectual city mother who 

 is able to nurse her child successfully for the entire 

 first year is almost a phenomenon," he says. Dr. 

 Holt finds a marked decline in nursing ability among 

 the poorer classes in our cities, although not yet to 

 the same degree as among those higher in the social 



scale." 



Ill 



"V^Tien, regarding the decline of nursing ability as a 

 physiological phenomenon, we dismiss the alleged 

 social and economic causes as being entirely inade- 

 quate, granting them only a subordinate influence 

 as contributory factors, we must seek the primary 

 cause or causes elsewhere. One of the first reasons 

 to suggest itself to our minds is that it is due to im- 

 proper dress, such as tightly laced corsets, unsuit- 

 able food, and unwholesome ways of living in general,*'' 

 especially dissipation. How far any or all of these 

 enter into the problem has never yet been scientifically 

 ascertained, and must, therefore, be the subject of a 

 good deal of conjecture. It does not seem to me, 

 however, that much can be attributed to the influence 

 of dress. For this feeling there are several reasons: 



