Hygeia Food Cell, 8 oz.
date: label: date made
content: after 1916
name: label: maker
content: Hygeia Nursing Bottle Company
notes: label: Description
content: Orange, white and black cardboard box with a picture of the food cell on front and back sides. Box contains one wide-mouth, straight-sided, glass food cell embossed with ounce graduated scale: 1 to 8. Glass cell wrapped in corrugated protective sleeve. Paper insert included with instructions and information concerning Hygeia products: "The use of these bottles lessens infant mortality." The bottle is embossed with two patent dates: JUNE 19TH 1894 (No. 521,773) and PAT. DEC. 5TH 1916 (No. 1,207,377).
label: Description
content: The "Hygeia" Food Cell (nursing bottle) was first patented by William M. Decker of Kingston, New York, on June 19, 1894 (Patent No. 521,773). The covers, or "breasts," for the bottles were sold separately. As claimed in the patent, Decker’s design embodied “a perfect sanitary feeding device for infants, which will obviate disease that results from want of proper assimilation of food, and that will permit a correct administration of food in a perfectly clean condition.” The simple cylindrical construction of the “receptacle” was inexpensive and easy to clean. The elastic cover/nipple was “substantially-similar to a mother’s breast and nipple.” The straight-walled, wide-mouthed bottle was a departure from earlier bottles which often had very narrow openings and used long sucking tubes which harbored bacteria. The subsequent 1916 patent by Decker improved on the nipple (breast) construction.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: United States: New York, Buffalo
setName: label: See more items in
content: Medicine and Science: Medicine
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: In Memory of Dr. Stanley Gould
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 2013.0099.09
label: patent number
content: US1207377A
label: accession number
content: 2013.0099
label: catalog number
content: 2013.0099.09
objectType: label: Object Name
content: infant feeder
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: glass (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: cardboard (packaging material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 2 1/2 in x 2 1/2 in x 5 3/4 in; 6.35 cm x 6.35 cm x 14.605 cm
label: Measurements
content: overall: 5 3/4 in x 2 3/8 in x 2 3/8 in; 14.605 cm x 6.0325 cm x 6.0325 cm