ild is not otherwise ill than that it is
no longer bright, as it was wont to be, it ceases to gain flesh, it
sleeps more than it used to do, though when it wakes it is always eager
for the breast, and cries when leaving it, and if the experiment is made
of giving it some milk and water immediately on leaving it, it takes
that greedily. Mothers are loth to believe this failure of their
resources, and in the case of some who have firm and well-formed
breasts, there is but little change in their appearance to show that
what remains may serve for beauty, not for use. But if while the child
is sucking, the nipple is taken suddenly from its mouth, instead of
innumerable little jets of milk, spirting out from the openings of the
milk-ducts, the nipple will be seen to be barely moistened by its
languid flow.

In conditions such as these the question of weaning partially or
completely inevitably occurs, and where the mother's weakness is the
occasion of the failure to nourish the child, half-measures are of no
avail, for so long as she does not entirely give up the attempt to do
that to which her health is unequal, her own state will grow worse, that
of the child will not improve. When errors of diet or inattention to
general rules of health incapacitate the mother from the performance of
her duty, there may be hope from the adoption of a wiser course; while
when the supply simply fails from its inadequacy, much may be hoped for
from a wise combination of hand-feeding with nursing at the breast; the
mother perhaps suckling the infant by day, but being undisturbed by
demands upon her at night.

Last of all, I must refer to cases in which love has been stronger than
reason, as indeed it often is, and in which young people with some
pronounced hereditary taint of scrofula or consumption marry and have
children. In such cases, if the consumptive taint is on the mother's
side, it is, I believe, much wiser, in the inability to obtain a good
wet-nurse, to bring up the child by hand rather than at the mother's
breast. One word, however, applicable in such circumstances, age and
long experience entitle me to add, and it is this. It is essential that,
in the absence of that guarantee against the too rapid succession of
pregnancies which suckling for a reasonable time presents, there should
be self-restraint on both sides, lest the inscription on the young
wife's grave should be, as I have too often known it, the same as, in
despite of p