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A History of Infant Feeding: Part II. Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

1953; BMJ; Volume: 28; Issue: 139 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1136/adc.28.139.232

1468-2044

I. G. Wickes,

Child and Adolescent Health

Jacques Guillemeau (born 1550), the French obstetrician, opens the seventeenth century with his work 'De la Nourriture et Gouvernement des Enfans' which was anonymously translated into 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 of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, London.There is a well written preface eight pages long addressed to 'Ladies, wherein they are exhorted to 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 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 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 'carried me three yeares in her armes, and nourished 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 between mother and child declines.(3) Some bad 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 oftquoted story of Blanche of Castile, Queen of France, who, on learning that one of the ladies of the Court 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.Chapter I (pp.1-8) deals with the 'nurse and what election and choice ought to be made of her'.He probably derived the major part from Paulus Aegineta, recommending that she should be of healthy lineage, good behaviour, sober, eventempered, happy, chaste, wise, discreet, careful, observant, understanding, conscientious and always ....