pkins which were wrapped round the baby under its swaddling
bands would be dried in the sun again and again, and replaced on the
infant without being washed. No care was taken to wash the mother's
breast or the baby's mouth, in spite of fermentation so pronounced as
to cause local disorder. Suckling of infants was carried out quite
irregularly; the cries of the child were the sole guide whereby its
feeding times, whether by night or day, were determined; and the more
it suffered from indigestion and the resulting pains, the more
frequently was it fed, to the constant aggravation of its sufferings.
Who in those days might not have seen mothers carrying in their arms
babies flushed with fever, perpetually thrusting the nipple into the
little howling mouth in the hope of quieting it? And yet those mothers
were full of self-sacrifice and of maternal anguish!

Science laid down simple rules; it enjoined the utmost possible
cleanliness, and formulated a principle so self-evident that it seems
astounding people should not have recognized it for themselves: that
the smallest infant, like ourselves, should have regular meals, and
should only take fresh nourishment when it has digested what has been
given before; and hence that it should be suckled only at intervals of
so many hours, according to the months of its age and the
modifications of physical function in its development. No infant
should ever be given crusts of bread to suck, as is often done by
mothers, especially among the lower orders, to still its crying,
because particles of bread might be swallowed, which the child is yet
incapable of digesting.

The mothers' anxiety then was: what are we to do when the baby cries?
They found to their astonishment after a time that their babies cried
a great deal less, or indeed not at all; they even saw infants only a
week old spending the two hours' intervals between successive meals
calm and rosy, with wide-open eyes, so silent that they gave no sign
of life, like Nature in her moments of solemn immobility. Why indeed
should they cry continually? Those cries were the sign of a state of
things which must be translated by these words: suffering and death.

And for these wailing little ones the world did nothing. They were
strapped up in swaddling clothes, and very often handed over to a
young child incapable of responsibility; they had neither a room nor a
bed of their own.

It was Science which came to the rescue and created