Sarah Swann, aged four years six months, admitted for Hooping-cough with convulsions,--_suckled one year_.
Henry Harris, aged two years three months, admitted for Hooping-cough, _with an affection_ of the head,--_suckled one year four months_.
Maria Hughes, aged two years, admitted for _Convulsions_ supervening upon Hooping-cough--_suckled one year three months_.
Thomas Benson, aged one year six months, admitted for Pneumonia, with _well-marked affection of the head_--_suckled one year four months_.
Mary Kenner, aged six years, admitted for Hooping-cough, with _well-marked affection of the head_--_suckled one year six months_.
John Ennis, aged one year seven months, admitted for Bronchitis, to which _a decided affection of the head succeeded_--_suckled one year_.
_Case of Meningitis produced in consequence of the Child being suckled from its birth by a Woman who had at that time been delivered one Year._
Ellen Willoughby, aged nine months, admitted for Meningitis; at present suckled by a woman who has been _delivered one year and nine months_.
With respect to the manner in which protracted lactation causes the complaint that forms the subject of these remarks, I formerly was undecided; but have now no doubt whatever of its arising _secondarily_ from derangement in the functions of the abdominal viscera, occasioned by the depraved condition of the breast-milk.
It is universally allowed among medical men that irritations in the stomach and bowels will, through the agency of particular nerves, produce sympathetic irritation in the brain,--that peculiar action being thus elicited which terminates in the effusion of serum, constituting the disease named Hydrocephalus.--'The continued irritation of important or very sensible nerves is, perhaps,' says Mr. Burns, '_one of the most common causes_' (of Hydrocephalus); 'hence it may follow dentition, and _very often arises from a bad state of the chylopoietic viscera_.'
It is also no less generally known that food of a bad quality or improper description will produce derangements in the digestive organs. Now, having already shewn that the milk when lactation is protracted becomes deteriorated, it plainly appears that such milk is capable of occasioning derangement of the chylopoietic viscera; and it being allowed that derangement of these viscera, from any source, may give rise to inflammation of the brain, I conceive it follows that protracted lactation must be admitted as one cause of such effect. This train of reasoning, therefore, from generally admitted data, seems to _prove that Meningitis_, or inflammation of the brain, _in children can be produced by their being suckled for too long a period_, and _that it is so produced I assert from repeated experience_.