32 THE COMMON SENSE OF THE MILK QTJESTION 



be forgotten that, except in the more progressive 

 nations during the past few years, the average Jew- 

 ish woman has been secluded and uneducated; that 

 for many centuries it has been customary to regard 

 the mental development of the girls in Hebrew fami- 

 lies as a matter of no consequence whatever. It 

 would be interesting to know for certain whether 

 among the minority of highly educated Jewish women 

 the disability to nurse their children prevails. Sev- 

 eral Jewish physicians have assured me that such is 

 their belief; but the relatively small number of such 

 women included in their practice, and the fact that 

 none of the physicians had given the matter special 

 attention, or kept records of the cases, forbid my 

 attaching very much importance to their opinions, 

 except in so far as they may be supported by scien- 

 tifically reliable data. 



It is important to remember in this discussion 

 that the decay of the lacteal functions is not ascribed 

 to education, but to the development of civilization. 

 It is not merely that as we ascend the scale of civi- 

 lization women are in general more highly educated, 

 using the term in the strict pedagogic sense, but 

 that they are subject to profound and far-reaching 

 intellectual and nervous developments, in which 

 education is only a factor. The factory workers of 

 Lancashire or Massachusetts may not be educated 

 much, if any, above the standard prevailing among 



