I've just returned from a week in London to visit my elderly and very ill
grandmother.  (UK Lactnetters, she is in the Hammersmith Hospital and I
spent a huge amount of time there this week.)

I had a lively discussion on cultural differences in breastfeeding, milk
banking and formula company advertising policies with my cousin and his wife
who are both doctors and the parents of 2 breastfed children (one who was
cup fed and Haberman fed for months because she would not suckle due to a
cleft lip and other problems).

I was given a book called "Medieval Women: A Social History of Women in
England 450-1500" by Henrietta Leyser.  I have only read bits of it, but of
course, looked up breastfeeding in the index.  There are 4 pages discussing
breastfeeding and wetnursing in the middle ages and I though you might be
interested in a few excerpts.

Page 134
"Returning to the theorist and the ideal world, we find that the mother
should feed her children herself though in 'Trotula A', colostrum is not
recommended; 'some say it is good for [the baby] to drink the milk of nine
women before he drinks his mother's milk' but thereafter 'his mother's milk
is best for him'."

Page 135
"An Anglo-Saxon charm to induce lactation in a woman who cannot nourish her
child occurs in the treatis Lacnunga:

Take then in her hand milk of a cow of a single colour and then sip it with
her mouth and then go to running water and spit the milk into it and take up
in the same hand a mouthful of the water and swallow it.  Then say these
words: 'Everywhere I have carried for me the splendid strong kinsman; with
this splendid well nourished one.  I will have him for me and go home.'
When she goes to the brook then let her not look around, nor again when she
goes away; and then let her go into another house than that she started from
and there let her taste food."

Page 136
"Thomas of Chobham (and the writers of later English penitentials would
follow him) considered a mother's refusal to feed her own baby tantamount to
murder; no other milk could be as suitable; to reject God's gift of
milk-filled breasts was a kind of blasphemy that deserved a severe penance."

There is more, but I though these quotes were particularly interesting.

In one week, I only saw one mother nursing her baby, and that was on a bus.

Glad to be home but pretty tired!

Kathy

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Kathy Koch, BSEd, IBCLC
Great Mills, MD
mailto:[log in to unmask]
http://www.bftopics.org

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