The child thrived on this production
of a sympathetic and spontaneous lactation. Sir Hans Sloane
mentions a lady of sixty-eight who though not having borne a
child for twenty years, nursed her grandchildren one after
another.
Montegre describes a woman in the Department of Charente who bore
two male children in 1810. Not having enough milk for both, and
being too poor to secure the assistance of a midwife, in her
desperation she sought an old woman named Laverge, a widow of
sixty-five, whose husband had been dead twenty-nine years. This
old woman gave the breast to one of the children, and in a few
days an abundant flow of milk was present. For twenty-two months
she nursed the infant, and it thrived as well as its brother, who
was nursed by their common mother--in fact, it was even the
stronger of the two.
Dargan tells of a case of remarkable rejuvenated lactation in a
woman of sixty, who, in play, placed the child to her breast, and
to her surprise after three weeks' nursing of this kind there
appeared an abundant supply of milk, even exceeding in amount
that of the young mother.
Blanchard mentions milk in the breasts of a woman of sixty, and
Krane cites a similar instance. In the Philosophical Transactions
there is an instance of a woman of sixty-eight having abundant
lactation.
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