650 
Paris show that 448 out of 5 57 women who attended were able to 
nurse their children. The importance of maternal nursing is well 
recognized in France both by the Government and by commercial in- 
terests. The effect of this encouragement upon public sentiment has 
been marked and in some of the industrial districts of France where 
formerly the artificial feeding of infants was the rule, it lias now 
become the exception. 
In most of the factories of that country employing women, notices 
are conspicuously posted setting forth the advantages of maternal 
nursing. In many of these establishments rooms are set apart, 
wherein mothers nurse their children, and they can always obtain 
leave of absence at appropriate intervals for the purpose of suckling 
their infants. 
In Italy a law has been passed compelling each industrial establish- 
ment employing 50 or more women to furnish rooms for this purpose. 
Causes preventive of maternal nursing . — Three causes are mainly 
operative in depriving infants of their right to the breast. First, 
physical inability on the mother’s part to nurse her child; second, 
inability on her part by reason of her engagement in some industrial 
pursuit ; and third, disinclination, chiefly by reason of the trouble 
maternal nursing involves and the divorce it necessarily entails from 
social pleasures and pursuits. 
Yon Bunge has shown that apart from local and systemic disease, 
alcoholism seems to be the chief cause, in any country as a whole, 
which renders mothers as a class unable to nurse their children. The 
daughters of the third generation of alcoholics are usually unable to 
suckle their young. 
The second condition referred to, i. e., the engagement of the 
mother in some industrial pursuit, depends in a great measure upon 
the willingness of husbands to accept the earnings of their wives at 
the expense of their children, or upon their failure to provide for 
them. This forces the mother to work for her bread while her child 
is turned over to the tender mercies of some stranger and the milk 
bottle. 
Much can be done by general popular enlightenment to eliminate 
the third cause, namely, the disinclination of mothers to nurse their 
children. It is hardly to be supposed that any woman will refuse to 
nurse her baby from purely selfish considerations, once she is fully 
informed of the enormous advantages it confers upon her child. It 
is obviously the duty of the medical profession to further this by 
every means at their command. 
In view of the foregoing, every mother should nurse her child un- 
less there are cogent reasons to the contrary. The following causes 
may be mentioned as contraindicating maternal nursing: 
