A History of Infant Feeding by Lan G

A HISTORY OF INFANT FEEDING BY LAN G. WICKES PART IH. SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES (REcErvED FOR PuBLICATION FEBRUARY 5, 1953) Seventeenth Centuy Writers probably derived the major part from Paulus Jacques Guillemeau (born 1550), the French Aegineta, recommending that she should be of obstetrician, opens the seventeenth century with his healthy lineage, good behaviour, sober, even- work 'De la Nourriture et Gouvernement des tempered, happy, chaste, wise, discreet, careful, Enfans' which was anonymously translated into observant, understanding, conscientious and always English in 1612 under the title of 'The Nursing of Children'. This was bound with his treatise on mid- wifery and a copy of this edition, whose title page is .... reproduced here, is the oldest textbook in the library :.-I..A.G of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, London. SING OF There is a well written preface eight pages long addressed to 'Ladies, wherein they are exhorted to [ILDREN. nurse their own children themselves', in which he asserted that there was 'no difference between a woman who refuses to nurse her owne childe, and htS SET one that kills her child as soone as shee hath con- ceived', but without acknowledgement to Favorinus. ~-_ He also related the classical story of the boy who in wwCD later years greeted his nurse with gold, but gave only silver to his mother because she had no alternative but to nourish him in her womb, whereas the nurse HEM.ERA NES TO 'carried me three yeares in her armes, and nourished D dif me with her owne bloude'. Guillemeau enumerated his objections to wet nurses as follows: (1) The child might be changed and another put in his place. (2) the natural affection *N F.RENCH BY between mother and child declines. (3) Some bad A..1U5A the condition or inclination may be derived from the nurse. (4) The nurse may impart some bodily imperfection, such as the 'French Pockes', to the child and thence even to the parents. He believed that the qualities of temperament con- veyed in the milk were more important than heredity, or, as he put it, 'Nurture prevails more than Nature' Guillemeau concluded his preface with the oft- quoted story of Blanche of Castile, Queen of France, :. who, on learning that one of the ladies of the Court " IX L Di had just suckled her son, im iately thrust her finger down his throat to make him vomit the foreign milk which she believed would harm him. FiG. 5.-Title page of Jacques Gu llu's work. Chapter I (pp. 1-8) deals with the 'nurse and what Reproduced by kind pemissn of the ibrn, Medical Colkee election and choice ought to be made of her'. He Library, St. Bartholomews Hospital. 232 HISTORY OF INFANT FEEDING: PART II 233 willing to give the breast. She should be physically a respect to the age, complexion, temper, and to the healthy, with a pleasing countenance, 'ruddie desire which the child hath to sucke.' mouth', and rosy complexion, and she should have In Chapter VII we find the earliest hint of the 'veire white teeth' and broad but not pendulous almost military form of discipline which sub- breasts with good nipples; she should play with her sequently steadily gained ground and reached a charge and change him often. Guillemeau waned climax at the beginning of the present century. against redheads and his objection to them may Guillemeau recommended that the infant be changed either have been due to the fact that their fiery at 7 am., noon, 7 p.m. and midnight but, realizing temperament would have been detrimental to the that this was a counsel of perfection, he hastened to milk, or he may have shared the view of Mauriceau add that (1673) who objected to them because of their 'ill 'because there is no certain howre, either of the accents', and because their 'milke hath a soure, child's sucking, or sleeping: therefore divers, after stinking and bad scent'! he hath slept a good while do every time shift him; Not only should the temperament, physique and kast he should foule and bepisse himself.' complexion of the nurse be examined, but her milk Chapters IX and X deal with weaning which is also should be closely scrutinized. The milk should begun when the upper and lower incisors have be sweet, odourless and white; blue milk indicates erupted with the giving of sops, bread, panada or melancholy, yellow choler, and red means that it is gruel, and later (e.g. at about 15 months) minced not well concocted. If it is too watery scouring and poultry is added together with meat after the age of undernourishment will follow, whereas if it is too 2. Complete weaning was delayed until after all the thick the infant will be liable to indigestion, curdling, teeth had erupted, and evidently quite a ceremony obstruction and stones. The nail test was modified was customary. Spring or autumn were the seasons to the extent ofusing a glass instead of the fingernail. of choice and it was important to start during the Nurses were naturally prone to conceal the fact that waxing of the moon. Guillemeau describes a typical their milk was failing for fear of losing their position, day in the weaning period as follows: (1) Change and to guard against deceit Guillemeau recom- and breast feed on waking. (2) After an interval of mended frequent examination of the breasts to two or three hours give panada, gruel, etc. (3) Two ensure continued activity and of the baby to see if hours later give the second breast feed. (4) After he is 'bepissed'. another sleep, change him on waking, take him into Chapter II deals with the nurses' 'dyet and manner the fresh air and then breast feed again. (5) After of life', in which she is waned against bad air, bad another sleep give dinner with boiled water to drink. smells, salty or spiced foods, garlic, mustard, stale There is an interesting comment in the margin by cheese and also roast meat if the infant's complexion the English translator who points out that the advice is moist or phlegmatic. She should spurn all raw about boiled water refers only to France 'where they fruit, and drink only ale, beer, barley water or wine, have not Ale or Beere'! If under the above regime rest whenever she can, keep her bowels open and the infant refuses to forsake the breast then the 'shun all disquietness of mind'. nipple should be anointed with aloes or mustard or The next three chapters deal with mothercraft and the mother should be kept out of the infant's range then on page 18 chapter VI he is concerned with the of vision. actual technique of feeding. The baby is kept away Caulfield (1932) has drawn attention to the from the breast for at least eight days after delivery, hitherto unheeded work. the 'Countesse of Lincolnes and even as long as one month, i.e., until the mother Nurserie', which was written by Elizabeth Clinton, is 'purified of her after-purging, as Hippocrates Dowager Countess of Lincoln, and printed in saith'. This is a longer period than Soranus advised, Oxford in 1662. It is short and is concerned with and he gives no instruction as to how the infant is 'the duty of nursing, due by mothers to their own to be nourshed in the interim, but in order to children'. establish and maintain lactation the mother is The worthy Countess had had 18 children of her advised to allow 'little prettie whelps' or 'her keeper' own and all were 'reared' by wet nurses-that is to to suck her breasts, or alternatively she should 'draw say most of them died in infancy. In fact only one them with a ass'. When suckling eventually begins son, Theophilus, reached majority to become the the infant is allowed to feed fourth Earl of Lincoln, and the book is dedicated to his wife, Bridget, who had the temerity to breast 'as often as he crieth' but 'only a little at a time, feed her first child and thereby put her mother-in- because the stomacke at first is but weak. 'It is verie hard to set downe the quantitie of milke that law to shame. It is greatly to the credit of the old a child should take; But therein the Nurse must have Countess that she saw the error of her former ways 234 ARCHIVES OF DISEASE IN CHILDHOOD and decided to write this book by way of atonement. notes that 'the Rickets is a new disease, both as to In it she cites Biblical examples of mothers who did name and to thing; that from fourteen dying thereof their-duty, e.g., Eve who fed Cain, Abel and Seth, Anno 1634 it hath gradually encreased to above five and Sarah the wife of Abraham, whose example hundred Anno 1660'. By careful reasoning Graunt confirmed the Countess in her new belief that dry calculated that this increase was real rather than breasts constituted a confession of past wickedness, apparent for the sum of all the likely causes of death, and that to withhold a full breast was to be 'more such as 'liver-gown', which might have masked the savage than dragons, and more cruel than ostriches diagnosis of rickets in previous years, never to their little ones' (see Job, 39, 16). She scornfully amounted to anything like that figure. disposed of the fashionable objections to breast It is not easy to account for the prevalence of feeding, e.g., that it spoilt the figure, was 'noisome rickets in the seventeenth century, but according to to one's cloathes', or interfered with gadding about, Drummond it was due to a fall in the calcium and and she was in a strong position to describe the phosphorus intake.

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