wo of
his paragraphs entire.

"Certain it is, that the milk does not diminish particularly at that
time, (ten months,) so far as regards quantity; and from the health of
children reared without spoon-meat beyond this time, it as certainly
undergoes no change in its quality. Children are sometimes so old before
weaning, as to be able to ask for the breast; and it has not been
remarked that the health of mothers, thus suckling, was in any way worse
than that of their neighbors. Altogether, then, it may be asserted, that
a mother is likely to enjoy better health, and to be less liable to
sickness and death during lactation, than during pregnancy.

"Many women believe, or affect to believe, that the weakness they labor
under arises from some latent moral or physical cause; but this weakness
is not attributed to lactation in the earlier months of suckling,
because the mother then considers herself fulfilling a necessary duty,
which her constitution, for so long, is well able to bear. So soon,
however, as the period of lactation has passed over, as it is
established by custom or fashion, she imagines she is exceeding the
intentions of nature, and she forthwith concludes that the continuance
of suckling is the cause of her uncomfortable sensations. This whim
being entertained, the child is weaned, and too often becomes the victim
of a most reprehensible delusion.

"Since nature has furnished the mother with milk for a longer period
than custom demands, it is evident that some good purpose for the mother
and child was intended in this arrangement. Had it been otherwise, the
secretion of milk would stop at a definite time, in like manner as the
period of gestation is definite. That a child, in comparison with the
young of the lower animals, is so long unable to provide for itself,
strongly tends to corroborate the proofs already advanced--that nature
originally had in view a more protracted period for lactation than is
now allowed.

"Some writers, following the laws of nature, as they interpreted them,
fixed the period of weaning at fifteen months, when the infant has got
its eight incisors and four canine teeth. There are well-authenticated
instances of mothers having suckled their children for three, four,
five, and even seven consecutive years; we ourselves have known cases
of lactation being prolonged far three and for four years, with the
happiest results."

It appears to me better, therefore, that the child should be