to the ſevereſt cenſure? I advert to well known facts, for I have frequently heard women ridiculed, and every little weakneſs expoſed, only becauſe they adopted the advice of ſome medical men, and deviated from the beaten track in their mode of treating their infants. I have actually heard this barbarous averſion to innovation carried ſtill further, and a ſenſible woman ſtigmatized as an unnatural mother, who has thus been wiſely ſolicitous to preſerve the health of her children, when in the midſt of her care ſhe has loſt one by ſome of the caſualties of infancy, which no prudence can ward off. Her acquaintance have obſerved, that this was the conſequence of new-fangled notions—the new-fangled notions of eaſe and cleanlineſs. And thoſe who pretending to experience, though they have long adhered to prejudices that have, according to the opinion of the moſt ſagacious phyſicians, thinned the human race, almoſt rejoiced at the diſaſter that gave a kind of ſanction to preſcription.
Indeed, if it were only on this account, the national education of women is of the utmoſt conſequence, for what a number of human ſacrifices are made to that moloch prejudice! And in how many ways are children deſtroyed by the laſciviouſneſs of man? The want of natural affection, in many women, who are drawn from their duty by the admiration of men, and the ignorance of others, render the infancy of man a much more perilous ſtate than that of brutes; yet men are unwilling to place women in ſituations proper to enable them to acquire ſufficient underſtanding to know how even to nurſe their babes.
