page_title: History and culture of breastfeeding
section_title: 18th century
hierarchical_section_title: History and culture of breastfeeding / 18th century
caption_attribution_description: Cover of Nutrix noverca, a 1752 tract by Carl Linnaeus criticising the use of wet-nurses and propagating the idea that mothers needed to breast feed their babies.
context_page_description: The history and culture of breastfeeding traces changing social, medical and legal attitudes to breastfeeding, the act of feeding a child breast milk directly from breast to mouth. Breastfeeding may be performed by the infant's mother or by a surrogate, typically called a wet nurse.
  Breastfeeding is the natural means by which a baby receives nourishment. In most societies women usually nurse their own babies, this being the most natural, convenient and cost-effective method of feeding a baby. However, there are situations when a mother cannot suckle her own baby. For example, she may have died, become unwell or otherwise cannot produce breast milk. Before the availability of infant formula, in those situations, unless a wet nurse was found promptly, the baby might die, and infant mortality rates were high. Wet nurses were a normal part of the social order, though social attitudes to wet nursing varied, as well as to the social status of the wet nurse. Breastfeeding itself began to be seen as common; too common to be done by royalty, even in ancient societies, and wet nurses were employed to breastfeed the children of royal families.
context_section_description: In the 18th century male medical practitioners started to work on the areas of pregnancy, birth and babies, areas traditionally dominated by women. Also in the 18th century the emerging natural sciences argued that women should stay at home to nurse and raise their children, like animals also do. Governments in Europe started to worry about the decline of the workforce because of the high mortality rates among newborns. Wet nursing was considered one of the main problems. Campaigns were launched against the custom among the higher class to use a wet nurse. Women were advised or even forced by law to nurse their own children. The biologist and physician Linnaeus, the English doctor Cadogan, Rousseau, and the midwife Anel le Rebours described in their writings the advantages and necessity of women breastfeeding their own children and discouraged the practice of wet nursing. Sir Hans Sloane noted the value of breast-feeding in reducing infant mortality in 1748. His Chelsea manor which was later converted to a botanic garden was visited by Carl Linnaeus in 1736. In 1752 Linnaeus wrote a pamphlet against the use of wet nurses. Linnaeus considered this against the law of nature. A baby not nursed by the mother was deprived of the laxative colostrum. Linnaeus thought that the lower class wet nurse ate too much fat, drank alcohol and had contagious (venereal) diseases, therefore producing lethal milk.
  Mother's milk was considered a miracle fluid which could cure people and give wisdom. The mythical figure Philosophia-Sapientia, the personification of wisdom, suckled philosophers at her breast and by this way they absorbed wisdom and moral virtue. On the other hand, lactation was what connected humans with animals. Linnaeus – who classified the realm of animals – did not by accident rename the category 'quadrupedia' (four footed) in 'mammalia' (mammals). With this act he made the lactating female breast the icon of this class of animals in which humans were classified.
caption: Cover of Linnaeus' Nutrix Noverca (1752)
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