or, if considerably younger, the diseased or
debilitated nurse ought to be exchanged for one who has a supply of
healthy milk of a corresponding age. If such cannot be procured, the
child must be brought up by hand; for, so long as it is allowed to
imbibe the noxious milk, there is little hope, in my mind, of the
medical treatment being of any great service; while on the contrary, it
is encouraging to know that many infants previously manifesting symptoms
of incipient Meningitis have completely recovered _soon after they were
weaned_[M].

When my attention first became directed to the subject, I was chiefly
struck with the ill effects resulting to the child from _protracted_
lactation, and hence supposed that cases of disease from suckling, when
continued for only a moderate period, were rarely if ever met with. More
enlarged experience, however, has now convinced me, that not only are
ill effects occasioned in children when lactation is protracted to a
very unusual extent, but that they occur sometimes, when its duration
has been merely a few months beyond what I conceive is right. Besides
which, we shall find that when from any cause whatever the nurse's milk
becomes impoverished and deteriorated, even if this take place at an
early period after delivery, the injurious effects already referred to
may be produced in the child: for improper food, whether it be bad milk
or any other inappropriate article of diet, is always calculated to
derange the functions of the stomach, bowels, and other chylopoietic
viscera, and in consequence to occasion disease.

It matters not whether the mother be originally unhealthy, and thus her
milk possess bad qualities; or whether from accidental circumstances, or
her continuing to give suck too long it becomes so: in either case the
same effect, namely, _deteriorated milk_, is produced, with the
concomitant evils to which I have alluded. This view of the matter is
corroborated by Case LII., in which true Meningitis attacked a child,
aged only nine months, who, therefore, was not suckled _too long_,--but
then the nurse of that child had been delivered _twenty-one months_,
having suckled another infant previously:--hence we may reasonably
conclude that her milk being from the beginning deteriorated, and
unadapted to the age of the child, the ill effects in this case were
produced at a much earlier period than usual.

It will be observed that I have only given _one_ instance of this latte