Horrible

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 6, 1866

HORRIBLE.—The French Academy of Medicine at Paris has lately brought to light a horrible state of affairs in regard to the habit of sending children to the country to be nursed and brought up. Every year twenty thousand babies are sent out of Paris under the care of these peasant nurses, and of that number only five thousand, on an average, are returned to their mothers, the other fifteen thousand having died of cold, starvation, and bad treatment. It is calculated that three hundred thousand of the nurslings have perished in this way during the last twenty years. These countrywomen make no scruple of exchanging the babies entrusted to them, and undertake to nurse several at a time. They write letters to the children's parents, describing in pathetic language the rosy cheeks and increasing charms of their infants, dead weeks before the epistles were indited, and receive clothing and money for the little ones for months after they have been in their graves.