Note 21 — AN INQUIRY INTO THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MEDICINE AMONG THE INDIANS OF NORTH-AMERICA; AND A COMPARATIVE VIEW OF THEIR DISEASES AND REMEDIES WITH THOSE OF CIVILIZED NATIONS. Read before the American Philosophical Society, held at Philadelphia, on the 4th of February, 1774.
Reading edition
There has been much common-place declamation against the custom among the great, of not suckling their children. Nurses were common in Rome, in the declension of the empire: hence we find Cornelia commended as a rare example of maternal virtue, as much for suckling her sons, as for teaching them eloquence. That nurses were common in Egypt, is probable from the contract which Pharaoh's daughter made with the unknown mother of Moses, to allow her wages for suckling her own child. The same degrees of civilization require the same customs. A woman whose times for eating and sleeping are constantly interrupted by the calls of enervating pleasures, must always afford milk of an unwholesome nature. It may truly be said of a child doomed to live on this aliment, that, as soon as it receives its
———“breath, It sucks in “the lurking principles of death.”