Page:Contraception; 1st ed. (IA in.ernet.dli.2015.94163).pdf/92

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CONTRACEPTION

Illustrative Cases.

Case 251.—A lady in very comfortable circumstances, finely built and exceptionally strong and healthy. After the birth of her first child was told by both doctor and nurse that she could allow her husband to have coitus while she was suckling with perfect safety from risk of conceiving. She suckled the infant regularly and became pregnant again within a month of the date of the birth of the first child. (Quoted also p. 42.)

Cases quoted by Allen Davenport[1] in 1826 when he was speaking of the dread of the poor of further children after they had already had two or three: "This dread urges them on to adopt measures, with eagerness, which only promise to check the rapid succession of children. One of those measures is suckling the last child until it is a year and a half or two years old; I have known instances of children being kept to the breast for three years, when they could walk, talk and stand upon their feet, while they drained the last dregs from the flabby breast of the squalid and consumptive mother. Thousands of women are cut off in the prime of life, after suffer-

  1. ↑ Allen Davenport (1826): In a letter on the Poor Laws in the Republican Magazine, No. 7, vol. xiv, August 25, 1825.

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