Dear all:
I just thought I would share with you something that my major dissertation advisor discovered in a New York Review of Books article entitled "The Secrets of the Mummies" in the May 12th article.  The dear man was recuperating from surgery and a bad infection post surgery.  I hadn't seen him for many years, but he was in Manhattan for the surgery and many months prior to this, I had invited his wife, is a wonderful Medical Anthropologist who gave a talk about complementary feeding for the New York Lactation Consultant Association. Despite being too weak to get out of bed, he still found the energy to share this little gem. It talks about a Silk Road Exhibit featuring mummies from a part of China that was actually once Caucasian.  One of the mummies is a baby from the eighth century BC.  It was buried with a nursing bottle made from a goat's udder.  Ever the epidemiologist, my dissertation advisor commented that this was not an historical association (the bottle and the death) it was a historical coincidence. 

But the connections between the bottle and the death are so plausible.  Could this be the first recorded historical coincidence of a bottle being linked with an infant's death?

Given that it was uncertain whether or not we would even be able to hold the talk, his wife wasn't sure whether she would have the time to present an added bonus discussion on premastication -- which really on a fundamental level theorizes why human babies, unlike any other mammal, started needing solids before they achieve full dentition and managed to survive despite this fact.  I highly recommend the following article.  It is an excellent thought provoking read.  The backlash against this concept is already starting in the same way that there is a backlash against milk and bed sharing.  


Pelto GH, Zhang Y, Habicht J-P. Premastication: the second arm of infant and young child feeding for health and survival. Maternal and Child Nutrition; 2010, 6 (1): 4-18.


Happy reading,

Susan Burger

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