ed one year four months_.

CASE XLVIII.

Maria Hughes, aged two years, admitted for _Convulsions_ supervening
upon Hooping-cough--_suckled one year three months_.

CASE XLIX.

Thomas Benson, aged one year six months, admitted for Pneumonia, with
_well-marked affection of the head_--_suckled one year four months_.

CASE L.

Mary Kenner, aged six years, admitted for Hooping-cough, with
_well-marked affection of the head_--_suckled one year six months_.

CASE LI.

John Ennis, aged one year seven months, admitted for Bronchitis, to
which _a decided affection of the head succeeded_--_suckled one year_.

IV.

_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._

CASE LII.

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 ad