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MEMB. 4. SUBSECT. 1. Non-necessary, remote, outward, adventitious, or accidental causes: as first from the Nurse.
Of those remote, outward, ambient, Necessary causes, I have sufficiently discoursed in the precedent member, the Non-necessary follow: of which, saith Fuchsius, no art can be made, by reason of their uncertainty, casualty, and multitude; so called not necessary because according to Fernelius they may be avoided, and used without necessitie. Many of these accidental causes, which I shall entreat of here, might have well been reduced to the former, because they cannot be avoided, but casually happen to us, though accidentally, and unawares, at some time or other: the rest are contingent and inevitable, and more properly inserted in this rank of causes. To reckon up all is a thing unpossible; of some therefore more remarkable of these contingent causes which produce Melancholy, I will briefly speak and in their order.
From a childs Nativity, the first ill accident that can likely befall him, in this kinde is a bad Nurse, by whose means alone he may be tainted with this malady from his cradle. Aulus Gellius l. 12. c. 1. brings in Phavorinus that eloquent Philosopher, proving this at large, that there is the same vertue and property in the milk as in the seed, and not in men alone, but in all other creatures:
he gives instance in a Kid and Lamb, if either of them suck of the others milk; the Lamb of the Goats, or the Kid of the Ewes, the wool of the one will be hard, and the hair of the other soft. Giraldus Cambrensis Itinerar. Cambriæ l. 1. c. 2. confirmes this by a notable example which happened in his time. A sow-pig by chance sucked a Brach, and when he was grown, would miraculously hunt all manner of Dear, and that as well, or rather better than any ordinary hound. His conclusion is, that men and beasts participate of her nature and conditions, by whose milk they are fed.
Phavorinus urgeth it farther, and demonstrates it more evidently, that if a Nurse be mis-shapen, unchast, unhonest, impudent, drunk, cruel, or the like, the child that sucks upon her brest will be so too; all other affections of the minde and diseases, are almost ingrafed, as it were, and imprinted into the temperature of the Infant by the Nurses milk; as Pox, Leprosie, Melancholy, &c.
Cato for some such reason would make his servants children suck upon his wives brest, because by that means they would love him and his the better, and in all likelihood agree with them. A more evident example that the minds are altered by milk, cannot be given, than that of Dion, which he relates of Caligula’s cruelty; it could neither be imputed to father nor mother, but to his cruel nurse alone, that anointed her paps with bloud stil when he sucked which made him such a murderer, and express for cruelty to an hair:
and that of Tiberius, who was a common drunkard, because his nurse was such a one. Et si delira fuerit, (one observes) infantulum delirum faciet, if she be a fool or dolt, the child she nurseth will take after her, or otherwise be misaffected; which Franciscus Barbarus l. 2. c. ult. de re uxoriâ proves at ful, and Ant. Guivarra lib. 2. de Marco Aurelio: the childe will surely participate.
For bodily sickness there is no doubt to be made. Titus, Vespasians son was therefore sickly, because the Nurse was so, Lampridius. And if we may believe Physicians, many times children catch the pox from a bad Nurse, Botaldus cap. 61. de lue vener. Besides evil attendance, negligence, and many gross inconveniences, which are incident to Nurses, much danger may so come to the childe.
For these causes Aristotle Polit. lib. 7. c. 17. Phavorinus and Marcus Aurelius would not have a childe put to Nurse at all, but every mother to bring up her own, of what condition soever she be; for a sound and able mother to put out her childe to nurse, is naturæ intemperies, so Guatso cals it, ’tis fit therefore she should be nurse her self: the mother will be more careful, loving and attendant, then any servile woman, or such hired creatures; this all the world acknowledgeth, convenientissimum est (as Rod. à Castro de nat. mulierum lib. 4. c. 12. in many words confesseth) matrem ipsam lactare infantem, who denies that it should be so?
and which some women most curiously observe: amongst the rest, that Queen of France, a Spaniard by birth, that was so precise and zealous in this behalf, that when in her absence a strange nurse had suckled her childe, she was never quiet till she had made the infant vomit it up again. But she was too jealous.
If it be so, as many times it is, they must be put forth, the mother be not fit or well able to be a nurse, I would then advise such mothers, as Plutarch doth in his book de liberis educandis, and S. Hierome li. 2. epist. 27. Lætæ de institut. fil. Magninus part. 2. Reg. sanit. cap. 7. and the said Rodericus that they make choice of a sound woman, of a good complexion, honest, free from bodily diseases; if it be possible, all passions and perturbations of the minde, as sorrow, fear, grief, folly, melancholy. For such passions corrupt the milk, and alter the temperature of the childe, which now being Udum & molle lutum, is easily seasoned and perverted.
And if such a nurse may be found out, that will be diligent and careful withall, let Phavorinus and M. Aurelius plead how they can against it, I had rather accept of her in some cases then the mother herself, and which Bonacialus the Physician, Nic. Biesius the politician, lib. 4. de repub. cap. 8. approves, Some nurses are much to be preferred to some mothers.
For why may not the mother be naught, a peevish drunken flurt, a waspish cholerick slut, a crazed peece, a fool, (as many mothers are) unsound as soon as the nurse? There is more choice of nurses then mothers; and therefore except the mother be most vertuous, staid, a woman of excellent good parts, and of a sound complexion, I would have all children in such cases committed to discreet strangers.
And ’tis the only way; as by marriage they are engrafted to other families to alter the breed, or if any thing be amisse in the mother, as Ludovicus Mercatus contends, Tom. 2. lib. de morb. hæred. to prevent diseases and future maladies, to correct and qualifie the childes ill-disposed temperature, which he had from his parents. This is an excellent remedy, if good choice be made of such a Nurse.