The info on Iceland is in a chapter of Maher, The Anthropology of
Breastfeeding, natural law or social construct?, chapter 4 Hastrup, K., A
Question of Reason: Breastfeeding patterns in seventeenth and eightteenth
century Iceland. I remember from papers I read as a history undergraduate
that parts of Bavaria and neighbouring areas also practiced breastfeeding
avoidance in the 18th and 19th centuries. They used animal milks, whereas
in France and England two different systems of wet nursing were used --
quite far down the social scale. In England urban women of the emergent
lower middle class might send their babies out to the country to nurse, for
a few years. (17th / 18th century. Also catch Fildes' drawings of
elizabethan nipple shields -- made from pewter, silver, lead and wood.)
For more on breastfeeding avoidance in Europe from the time of Sumer, Rome
and Greece onward, read Fildes, V Breasts, Bottles, and Babies (1986).
By the way, I like parts of the Maher book. My reading has always been that
it attempts to present a multi-layered contexulaised view of breastfeeding
not that it concludes that breastfeeding is a burden on women, though I
would be interested in knowing what van Esterik disliked.
Did anyone see the book about the mummies of Urumchi in China? These
mummies date (from memory) from around 1,000 CE. There were colour plates,
one of an infant of about three months, accompanied by a sheep's bladder
with a nipple. The book says that we don't know if this represents a baby
who was given this because the mother died or what, but its clear that ways
to supplement / replace mother's milk are pretty ancient. I have long
thought we could date it to the era of horticulutre ore early agriculture,
when (some) humans ceased to practice hunting/gathering. "Domestication of
the crops, the animals and the women is established simultaneously" (Palmer,
G., The Politics of Breastfeeding,1993 p.139).
Magda Sachs
Breastfeeding Supporter, BfN, UK
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