hrown off from both, so considerable, that an infant breathing the
same air cannot possibly carry on its healthy existence while deriving
its vitality from so corrupted a medium. This objection, always in
force, is still more objectionable at night-time, when doors and windows
are closed, and amounts to a condition of poison, when placed between
two adults in sleep, and shut in by bed-curtains; and when, in addition
to the impurities expired from the lungs, we remember, in quiescence and
sleep, how large a portion of mephitic gas is given off from the skin.

2471. Mothers, in the fullness of their affection, believe there is no
harbour, sleeping or awake, where their infants can be so secure from
all possible or probable danger as in their own arms; yet we should
astound our readers if we told them the statistical number of infants
who, in despite of their motherly solicitude and love, are annually
killed, unwittingly, by such parents themselves, and this from the
persistency in the practice we are so strenuously condemning. The mother
frequently, on awaking, discovers the baby's face closely impacted
between her bosom and her arm, and its body rigid and lifeless; or else
so enveloped in the "head-blanket" and superincumbent bedclothes, as to
render breathing a matter of physical impossibility. In such cases the
jury in general returns a verdict of "_Accidentally overlaid_" but one
of "Careless suffocation" would be more in accordance with truth and
justice. The only possible excuse that can be urged, either by nurse or
mother, for this culpable practice, is the plea of imparting warmth to
the infant. But this can always be effected by an extra blanket in the
child's crib, or, if the weather is particularly cold, by a bottle of
hot water enveloped in flannel and placed at the child's feet; while all
the objections already urged--as derivable from animal heat imparted by
actual contact--are entirely obviated. There is another evil attending
the sleeping together of the mother and infant, which, as far as regards
the latter, we consider quite as formidable, though not so immediate as
the others, and is always followed by more or less of mischief to the
mother. The evil we now allude to is that most injurious practice of
letting the child _suck_ after the mother has _fallen asleep_, a custom
that naturally results from the former, and which, as we hare already
said, is injurious to both mother and child. It is injurious to t