The New Hampshire Gazette And General Advertiser

FROM A LONDON PAPER.

TO THE PUBLIC.

When I read the annual bill of mortality, I find on an average 6500 children under two years die, and 2000 between two and five years of age, within the bills; also many belonging to parents within the bills, put to nurse without the bills—I cannot help thinking there must be some causes more than just common mortality—for we do not find amongst other animals that the young die so fast. I will therefore just give my sentiments thereon, for abler hands to improve on.

1st, The loose lives our young men lead before marriages, and the very unnatural behaviour of many mothers, who are no sooner delivered of a tender infant, when they turn it out of doors, to nurse, as they call it, where the poor child experiences all the misfortunes of poverty, often starved, or overlaid by a drunken woman and her husband, and very often a poor child put in its stead, Madame, the mother, being too fine a lady to deny herself her visiting cards, and public amusements—is such a mother worthy of the name of a woman? No—worse than a monster!

2d, Many infants fall a sacrifice to the food given them. Bread, milk and sugar are the three principal things. The bread, we are given to understand, has a proportion of alum in it. The milk, I am well informed, is often mixed with whiting and water. A person who lived with me lately as a servant, informed me, she lodged at a house once when out of place, where some milk carriers had the lower apartments; that she often heard a churn going, and wondered at it, as no butter was made by them. One day the key being left in their door, and they out, she had curiosity to go in, when she found a churn, a parcel of whiting, and a pot with some in it, from which she gathered, that whiting and water churned and boiled, was put into the milk; and she afterwards took notice, the milk from the cows was brought home, and soon after much more carried out smoking hot. And now as to the sugar—the ships going out to our West-India islands, carry out hogsheads of lime, for they say the sugar will not granulate without lime, and it is well known, our sugar refiners use lime in the refining of sugar. Now, with the alum in the bread, the whiting in the milk, and the lime in the sugar, is it to be wondered so many disorders attend them in the stomach and bowels; I doubt not many infants are yearly sacrificed thereby. It is a thing which calls aloud for public enquiry—till then I can only point out a method to be pursued by all parents who regard their infants—that every mother suckle her own children, and when weaned, feed them with flour and water boiled, and a little butter in it, and a small proportion of animal food, abstaining from medicines of all sorts, unless ordered by a skilful apothecary, and I am persuaded the lives of many, very many infants, will be preserved thereby. I could wish to see this subject a national enquiry. J. J.