Page:Transactions of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association, volume 1.djvu/107

 years, during which it has been my lot to see, annually, very many children of the poor admitted as patients of our local charitable Institutions, I have frequently had my attention drawn to this source of infantile malady. When the state of the poor is such as to enable the mother, who is suckling an infant, to partake of a more liberal diet than she had previously been accustomed to, what a change will often take place in the health of the babe. The habit too frequent among the poor, of deferring the time of weaning beyond the proper period, is often followed by the most mischievous consequences to the health of the child. Is it surprising that the lacteal secretion of a mother, who has given suck for nearly two years, should be deficient in the requisite nutritious qualities, especially when the system has not had the benefit of proper support? and if there should chance, at the same time, to be a predisposition to disease in the mother, perhaps a strumous diathesis, what more likely than that the milk secreted from her blood should convey the seeds of disease to her progeny? To this cause may be attributed not a few of those distressing disorders which affect our infant population in large and populous cities, where defective nutriment, and want of pure air, elicit a variety of morbid appearances, of rare occurrence among the offspring of our peasantry. Compare the ruddy complexions of the latter with the pasty visages of the former. You find fatal diseases in both; indeed, the proportion of acute cases will be greater, probably, in the country district; but, if you would witness the insidious developments of disease, its slow and silent ravages, its endless modifications, functional, perhaps,