Maternity, or, The bearing and nursing of children : Including female education and beauty / by O.S. Fowler.

  • Fowler, O. S. (Orson Squire), 1809-1887.
Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Maternity, or, The bearing and nursing of children : Including female education and beauty / by O.S. Fowler. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    by day's works, and was just getting something ahead for a home; that she had been much expense to him by sickness, and hated to saddle him with servant's hire, while she was able to be about the house ; that she could illy afford time, even to lie down, during the day, etc. I answered, emphatically, Madam, this is a case of life and death, to your child, at least, and probably to you, too. You must do as I say, or you will surely miscarry, and probably die yourself. Take your choice. Would not your husband rather hire help, and have a living child, than have no heir to enjoy his home and property? She replied, Yes, but— and stopped. I followed, Yes, but it is the one or the other. Which, is for you to say in action. Being in an adjoining town the next November, and feeling a deep interest in her case, I called upon her, and found her in a small kitchen, full of the smoke of burnt fat, frying dough-nuts. Good woman, what did I tell you ? I exclaimed. Her unborn child was still alive, and I besought her, at this eleventh hour, to fol- low my advice. My next news from her was, that she had been delivered of a still-born child, which died three days before its birth; and that she was extremely feeble. She is now dead ; and her working thus at this time, was just as much suicide as if she had died of poison. She committed child-murder, and on her only child. She blighted her husband's last ecstatic hopes, and turned his holy joys into an agony of sorrow. She broke his heart, by killing his dearest wife, as well as only child. And all because too parsimonious to hire help, and too short-sighted to see that even true econ- omy, to say nothing of the life of mother or child, required that she be relieved of family cares and 3*