Note 16 — OF THE MODE BY WHICH PREGNANCY MAY BE DETERMINED.
Reading edition
North of Eng. Med. and Surg. Journ., vol. i., p. 230.
That the presence of milk in the female breast shall take place independent of pregnancy, from the above and other recorded facts, there can be no doubt; but the following beautiful exemplification of its formation in that of the male, places the question in a still stronger light. This interesting fact is cited from Captain Franklin’s narrative of his journey to the shores of the Polar Sea.
“A young Chipewyan had separated from the rest of his band, for the purpose of entrapping beaver, when his wife, who was his sole companion, and in her first pregnancy, was seized with her pains of labor. She died on the third day, after giving birth to a boy. The husband was inconsolable, and vowed in his anguish, never to take another woman to wife; but his grief was soon in some degree absorbed in anxiety for the fate of his infant son. To preserve its life he descended to the office of a nurse, so degrading in the eyes of a Chipewyan, as partaking of the duties of a woman. He swaddled it in soft moss, fed it with broth made from the flesh of the deer; and to still its cries, applied it to his breast, praying earnestly to the Great Master of Life to assist his endeavors. The force of the powerful passion by which he was actuated produced the same effect in his case as it has done in some others which are recorded: a flow of milk actually took place from his breast. He succeeded in rearing his child, taught him to be a hunter, and when he attained the age of manhood, chose him a wife from the tribe. The old man kept his vow in never taking a wife for himself, but he delighted in tending his son’s children; and when his daughter-in-law used to interfere, saying, that it was not the occupation of a man, he was wont to reply, that he had promised the Great Master of Life, if his child was spared, never to be proud like other Indians. Our informant, Mr. Wenkel (one of the Association) added, that he had often seen this Indian in his old age, and that his left breast, even then, retained the unusual size it had acquired in his occupation of nurse.” P. 157.
Man possesses the same organization as woman for secreting and conveying milk, which enables us readily both to understand and believe in the truth of the foregoing singular statement.