44 THE COMMON SENSE OF THE MILK QUESTION 



of the health bureaus of the country — a form of 

 graft that is more than ordinarily detestable. 



Among the rich it has always been customary to 

 secure the services of a wet-nurse in cases where the 

 mother was either unable or unwilling to nurse her 

 child, and the practice is very commonly recom- 

 mended in such cases by medical men. For the 

 poor, of course, such substitution is out of the ques- 

 tion. While the practice has many advantages, 

 it has also many disadvantages, and it is open to 

 very serious question whether careful artificial feed- 

 ing is not, upon the whole, safer and better.*^ In 

 the first place, as we have seen, the mother's milk 

 is continually undergoing changes which correspond 

 to the needs of the infant. It is practically impos- 

 sible to secure a wet-nurse, in this country at any 

 rate, whose baby is not either considerably older 

 or younger than the one she undertakes to nm'se, 

 and there is often trouble in consequence, her milk 

 being unsuited to the child. Sometimes several 

 nurses have to be tried before one is secured whose 

 milk agrees with the baby, and the constant disturb- 

 ance, often extending over several weeks, is always 

 a disadvantage and not infrequently a peril. Then, 

 too, there is the fact that there is always danger 

 of syphilitic infection, for even the most careful 

 examination will sometimes fail to reveal syphilis 

 in a woman. Even in the present state of semi- 



