> HI all..where can I find information regarding the introduction of infant
> formula into our society? Or some anthropological information regarding
> use
> of artificial baby milk through the centuries or decades? thanks in
> advance..Ann from N.Y.
>
Hi Ann.

Much of my book (Don't Kill Your Baby: Public Health and the Decline of
Breastfeeding in the 19th and 20th Centuries, Ohio State University Press,
2001) is on that very topic.

The word "formula" in relation to infant feeding stems from the 1890s. A
prominent Harvard University pediatrician, Thomas Rotch, had a theory (known
as percentage feeding or The American Method) that if a chemist could tweak
the content of cows' milk ever so slightly given the needs of each
individual baby the "feeding problem" could be solved. So Rotch became
involved in opening what were dubbed "milk laboratories" in major urban
areas and the chemists at these laboratories would alter the protein, milk
sugar, and fat in cows' milk based on the mathematical formulas provided
them by physicians. Hence the word---formula. The mathematical formulas were
indescribably complicated and, frankly, incomprehensible by any standard.
But an entire urban industry, albeit a small one, burgeoned based on this
theory. Hospitals, in fact, opened their own milk laboratories which
survived well into the 1930s. Formula writing in order to ostensibly produce
a food precisely suited for a particular baby based on height, weight,
physical condition, color of stools, odor of stools, texture of stools,
etc., etc. was taught in medical schools for decades. Medical students
complained that it was like learning higher astronomy. Thus the "science of
infant feeding" was born.

Hope this helps.

Jackie Wolf

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