As you will see (from my having lost six children in succession before
I reared one), I was very unfortunate in my early married life, and
at one time thought I was not going to rear any children. Congenital
weakness may have had something to do with the failure to rear, through
falling down a flight of stairs as a girl and dislocating my neck. This
fall would have cost me my life but for the presence of mind of a young
woman who picked me up. Using her hands and knees, she pulled my neck
in, and undoubtedly saved my life. The doctor said I would suffer as a
woman, for every organ internally was put out of place. My first set
of children were weakly, and being unable to nurse them, I resorted to
patent foods, which I am now firmly convinced did harm and not good,
and in my opinion contributed to the convulsions. I found later that
weakened milk, afterwards strengthened as the baby got older, was the
best and safest food for infants brought up by hand. Undoubtedly the
remaining ones progressed all right, and are sound and healthy. The
fact that one girl put ten and a half years’ perfect attendance in at
an elementary school speaks well for the change. The one I lost at
seven weeks was easily accounted for, from the fact that at the time
of birth I was suffering from the bloody flux, a very severe form of
dysentery. In fact, the doctor said that if I had had Asiatic cholera I
could not have been worse. You will readily see that that child had a
very poor start in life, and waned away from birth. As a result of my
experience, my advice is that mothers unable to suckle their children
should shun all patent foods, rusks, etc., as they would shun the devil
himself, for an infant will have to be born with a digestion like a
horse if it is to digest solid food in the early stages. Thousands of
infants are killed with mistaken kindness, and I am convinced that milk
and milk only--human, if possible, and animal, if human fails--in a
diluted state, is the only safe food for infants. I sincerely hope you
will sound a note of warning against patent foods that cake to a solid
lump in the infant’s stomach, the result being convulsions and death.
This is my sincere belief resulting from bitter experience.
_Wages 24s. to 30s.; ten children._