Page:A Short History of Aryan Medical Science.djvu/59

IV.] nurse be indispensable, she should be selected from the caste to which the mother belongs, should be of middle age, secreting good and sufficient milk, and having a male child. She should be of good disposition, always cheerful, exceedingly kind, obedient, contented, well-behaved, of good parentage, truthful, and willing to treat the child as her own. It is prejudicial to the child's health to be suckled by a nurse who has pendulous mammae, or is tall, short, corpulent, thin, pregnant, feverish, fatigued, hungry, careless about food, gluttonous, sulky, mean, immoral, diseased, or suffering from pain of any kind. The medical works of the Hindoos refer to certain rites which are observed by some even now on the occasion of suckling the child for the first time. The mother has to be clean, well-clad, and to sit facing the east. She then washes her right breast and squeezes out some milk from it. The father or the priest then sprinkles a little water over the infant, reciting an incantation, the mother or the nurse keeping her hand on the right breast all the time. The incantation is to this effect :— "O Child, let the Sea of Milk * fill the Mammae with milk for thee, and be thou strong and happy for ever. lovely-faced lady,