Page:Contraception; 1st ed. (IA in.ernet.dli.2015.94163).pdf/90

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CONTRACEPTION

never advise the method except for an emergency.

(4) Prolonged suckling of an infant or child.

A common impression which has unfortunately been fostered by the advice not infrequently given both by doctors and nurses, is that a woman does not conceive while she is suckling.

Prominence has been given to this advice and its dissemination fostered by the current very proper movement to encourage women to nurse their own children. Unfortunately health visitors and even doctors and nurses will deliberately tell women that they will be free from conception if they nurse, in order to induce them to nurse if they are reluctant to do so. I have repeatedly been told by women that they have received this advice; and that medical practitioners of high standing are still actually giving it is seen in the words of Dr. Mary Scharlieb, published by her in a popular magazine in 1922 when she said[1]: "If a woman suckles her child for eight or nine months, as she ought to do and as nearly all women can do, and then has a well-earned holiday from

  1. ↑ Mary Scharlieb, M.D. (1922): "The Case against Birth Control," Penny Magarine, No. 1258, December, 1922. See p. 469.

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