About wet-nurses, whose charges went from one hired baby to the next, Chris
Mulford writes:

<< And if her charges didn't thrive, she wouldn't have had any work! >>

Chris, I am not sure this is true.  Certainly the institution of wet-nursing
as a whole continued for centuries after it was very well known that many,
many more wet-nursed babies died.   The result was a cultural assumption that
well, babies die sometimes -- stuff happens.   Or in other words, the
standard for "if your charges didn't thrive" might well be far below what we
would consider acceptable.

I'm sure that the fanciest clients had wet-nurses with wonderful track
records, and that if ALL your babies died it was probably bad for the
long-term supply of customers.  But even that might mean just getting poorer
families who could pay you less -- I've read that in 18th century France, for
example, 95% of children were wet-nursed, meaning that even some quite poor
people were paying wet-nurses.  Presumably pay and status for wet-nurses
would have varied from horrible to not-too-bad, much as they do for child
care workers in the USA today.

Please note that I am NOT saying that mature milk is bad for infants or that
they won't thrive on it -- only that you can't prove it one way or another
from the history of wet-nurses.

Elisheva Urbas
pedantic in a friendly way, in NYC

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