Humboldt describes a
South American peasant of thirty-two who, when his wife fell sick
immediately after delivery, sustained the child with his own
milk, which came soon after the application to the breast; for
five months the child took no other nourishment. In Franklin's
"Voyages to the Polar Seas" he quotes the instance of an old
Chippewa who, on losing his wife in childbirth, had put his
infant to his breast and earnestly prayed that milk might flow;
he was fortunate enough to eventually produce enough milk to rear
the child. The left breast, with which he nursed, afterward
retained its unusual size. According to Mehliss some missionaries
in Brazil in the sixteenth century asserted that there was a
whole Indian nation whose women had small and withered breasts,
and whose children owed their nourishment entirely to the males.
Hall exhibited to his class in Baltimore a negro of fifty-five
who had suckled all his mistress' family. Dunglison reports this
case in 1837, and says that the mammae projected seven inches
from the chest, and that the external genital organs were well
developed. Paullini and Schenck cite cases of men suckling
infants, and Blumenbach has described a male-goat which, on
account of the engorgement of the mammae, it was necessary to
milk every other day of the year.
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