Oh, Alice, this sad story keeps coming back and back and back - the idea 
among health workers or trainee health workers that breastfeeding is suspect 
or that it is, at best, an intervention. Each time, it is sad, particularly 
because these people will each influence many others (mothers, colleagues, 
policy-makers, future students). Ties up with this particular instance is a 
blind spot as regards even thinking of supplementing the mother (not the 
baby) and ignorance of mothers' capacity to produce milk even when poorly 
nourished and under stress. The act of breastfeeding can indeed be calming. 
It is also part of a view that breastfeeding is as costly as artificial 
feeding because you have to feed the mother - often over-estimating and 
costing on foods brought long distances, instead of locally available foods.

None of this is new, and I don't mean just going back a few decades. La 
Berge's excellent paper on the life and work of early French paediatric 
author, Alfred Donne, mentioned that, not only did he advise applying 
stringent criteria in the selection of a wet-nurse, he also applied 
stringent conditions on whether a mother should be permitted to breastfeed 
her own baby. Only if permitted by her medical man should a mother 
breastfeed her biological baby and permission wasn't to be assumed. When was 
Donne writing?  The 1840s, his child-care book requiring a second edition in 
1846. No, this isn't the earliest such advice - just one I had at hand while 
writing this. (Donne has an acute accent on the "e".)
[La Berge A, Mothers and infants, nurses and nursing. Alfred Donne and the 
medicalization of child care in nineteenth-century Franch. Juprnal of the 
history of Medicine and Allied Science 1991; 46.]

Virginia

Dr Virginia Thorley OAM, PhD,IBCLC, FILCA
Private Practice Lactation Consultant
Historian of Medicine
Brisbane, QLD, Australia

Alice Farrow wrote on 07 October, 2013 5:46 AM:

Pat, I have just done a health science module with the Open University UK, 
for my IBCLC exam prerquisites - in particular we studied water and health 
and the illnesses caused by lack of access to clean water. We studied 
Kibera, the Kenyan slum (circa 170,000 people) where the health clinics 
don't even have running water - I saw video footage of just buckets on the 
floor for hand washing. Unfortunately, despite studied infant malnutrition 
and diahoerreal diseases, breastfeeding was just not mentioned. I brought 
this up on our student forum and was basically 'slammed' by a few other 
students  -'how do you expect malnourished mothers to feed infants etc.'. 
These are the health care workers of the future. We need to impact 
university texts and curriculums....


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