Page:Contraception; 1st ed. (IA in.ernet.dli.2015.94163).pdf/91

wifely duties, there will be an interval of about two years between the children."

While it is true that there are a good many women who find conception less likely to take place while they are nursing, it is absolutely untrue that suckling in itself affords a safe or even tolerably secure method of contraception.

While it is a very unsafe method of contraception, prolonged suckling has also other medical evils, among which may be noted the tendency it has in the poorer circles to starve the child, for so long as there is a supply of milk the mother does not inquire or consider whether it has all the necessary nourishing ingredients. Also it tends to weaken the mother, who is greatly emaciated and nervously run-down as a result of protracted nursing. The very fear of pregnancy, which is sometimes intense, also often affects the quality of the milk and hence, also, the quality of the child already born. (See also p. 186.)

While in this country it is only the very poor and ignorant who will continue to nurse a child that is able to walk, yet I have often seen in the East mothers still giving the breast to children of three or four years old because this sometimes secures freedom from the fresh conception which they dread.