History and Culture of Breastfeeding - Eighteenth Century

Eighteenth Century

In the 18th century male medical practitioners started to work on the areas of pregnancy, birth and babies. These areas were traditionally dominated by women. Also in the 18th century the emerging natural sciences argued that women should stay at home to nurse and raise their children, like animals also do. Governments in Europe started to worry about the decline of the workforce because of the high mortality rates among newborns. Wet nursing was considered one of the main problems. Campaigns were launched against the custom among the higher class to use a wet nurse. Women were advised or even forced by law to nurse their own children. The biologist and physician Linnaeus, the English doctor Cadogan, Rousseau, and the midwife Anel le Rebours described in their writings the advantages and necessity of women breastfeeding their own children and discouraged the practice of wet nursing. In 1752 Linnaeus wrote a pamphlet against the use of a wet nurse. Linnaeus considered this against the law of nature. A baby not nursed by the mother was deprived of the laxative colostrum. Linnaeus thought that the lower class wet nurse ate too much fat, drank alcohol and had contagious (venereal) diseases, therefore producing lethal milk.

Mother's milk was considered a miracle fluid which could cure people and give wisdom. The mythical figure Philosophia-Sapientia, the personification of wisdom, suckled philosophers at her breast and by this way they absorbed wisdom and moral virtue. On the other hand, lactation was what connected humans with animals. Linnaeus – who classified the realm of animals – did not by accident rename the category 'quadrupedia' (four footed) in 'mammalia' (mammals). With this act he made the lactating female breast the icon of this class of animals in which humans were classified.