"Mercenary hirelings" or "a great blessing"?: Doctors' and mothers' conflicted perceptions of wet nurses and the ramifications for infant feeding in Chicago, 1871-1961

Journal of Social History

Volumn 33, Issue 1, 1999, Pages 96-120

  Wolf, Jacqueline H ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 0039522016     PISSN: 00224529     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/jsh.1999.0012     Document Type: Review

References (180)

1. Arthur V. Meigs, "Proof that Human Milk Contains Only About One Per Cent. Casein; with Remarks Upon Infant Feeding," Archives of Pediatrics 1 (April 1884): 217. This article does not mention wet nursing. I quote it here only because Meigs's wording is typical of the way doctors described babies not breastfed by their mothers.
2. Most doctors preferred wet nurses over artificial food but, in practice, babies not breastfed by their mothers consumed artificial food far more frequently than they drank a wet nurse's milk. For more on the history of wet nursing in the United States see Janet Golden, A Social History of Wet Nursing in America: From Breast to Bottle (Cambridge, 1996). General histories of wet nursing are Valerie Fildes, Wet Nursing: A History from Antiquity to the Present (New York, 1988) and M. Livia Osborn, "The Rent Breasts: A Brief History of Wet Nursing," Midwife, Health Visitor and Communiry Nurse 15 (1979): 302-306; 347-348. For more on the history of infant feeding and why mothers, in significant numbers, began using human milk substitutes in the late nineteenth century see Jacqueline H. Wolf, " 'Don't Kill Your Baby': Feeding Infants in Chicago, 1903-1924," Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 53 (July 1998): 219-253; Jacqueline H. Wolf, "Discarding Nature's Plan: A Social History of Infant Feeding in Chicago, 1892-1938," unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Illinois at Chicago, 1998; and Rima D. Apple, Mothers & Medicine: A Social History of Infant Feeding 1890-1950 (Madison, 1987).
3. Most doctors preferred wet nurses over artificial food but, in practice, babies not breastfed by their mothers consumed artificial food far more frequently than they drank a wet nurse's milk. For more on the history of wet nursing in the United States see Janet Golden, A Social History of Wet Nursing in America: From Breast to Bottle (Cambridge, 1996). General histories of wet nursing are Valerie Fildes, Wet Nursing: A History from Antiquity to the Present (New York, 1988) and M. Livia Osborn, "The Rent Breasts: A Brief History of Wet Nursing," Midwife, Health Visitor and Communiry Nurse 15 (1979): 302-306; 347-348. For more on the history of infant feeding and why mothers, in significant numbers, began using human milk substitutes in the late nineteenth century see Jacqueline H. Wolf, " 'Don't Kill Your Baby': Feeding Infants in Chicago, 1903-1924," Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 53 (July 1998): 219-253; Jacqueline H. Wolf, "Discarding Nature's Plan: A Social History of Infant Feeding in Chicago, 1892-1938," unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Illinois at Chicago, 1998; and Rima D. Apple, Mothers & Medicine: A Social History of Infant Feeding 1890-1950 (Madison, 1987).
4. Most doctors preferred wet nurses over artificial food but, in practice, babies not breastfed by their mothers consumed artificial food far more frequently than they drank a wet nurse's milk. For more on the history of wet nursing in the United States see Janet Golden, A Social History of Wet Nursing in America: From Breast to Bottle (Cambridge, 1996). General histories of wet nursing are Valerie Fildes, Wet Nursing: A History from Antiquity to the Present (New York, 1988) and M. Livia Osborn, "The Rent Breasts: A Brief History of Wet Nursing," Midwife, Health Visitor and Communiry Nurse 15 (1979): 302-306; 347-348. For more on the history of infant feeding and why mothers, in significant numbers, began using human milk substitutes in the late nineteenth century see Jacqueline H. Wolf, " 'Don't Kill Your Baby': Feeding Infants in Chicago, 1903-1924," Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 53 (July 1998): 219-253; Jacqueline H. Wolf, "Discarding Nature's Plan: A Social History of Infant Feeding in Chicago, 1892-1938," unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Illinois at Chicago, 1998; and Rima D. Apple, Mothers & Medicine: A Social History of Infant Feeding 1890-1950 (Madison, 1987).
5. Most doctors preferred wet nurses over artificial food but, in practice, babies not breastfed by their mothers consumed artificial food far more frequently than they drank a wet nurse's milk. For more on the history of wet nursing in the United States see Janet Golden, A Social History of Wet Nursing in America: From Breast to Bottle (Cambridge, 1996). General histories of wet nursing are Valerie Fildes, Wet Nursing: A History from Antiquity to the Present (New York, 1988) and M. Livia Osborn, "The Rent Breasts: A Brief History of Wet Nursing," Midwife, Health Visitor and Communiry Nurse 15 (1979): 302-306; 347-348. For more on the history of infant feeding and why mothers, in significant numbers, began using human milk substitutes in the late nineteenth century see Jacqueline H. Wolf, " 'Don't Kill Your Baby': Feeding Infants in Chicago, 1903-1924," Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 53 (July 1998): 219-253; Jacqueline H. Wolf, "Discarding Nature's Plan: A Social History of Infant Feeding in Chicago, 1892-1938," unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Illinois at Chicago, 1998; and Rima D. Apple, Mothers & Medicine: A Social History of Infant Feeding 1890-1950 (Madison, 1987).
6. Most doctors preferred wet nurses over artificial food but, in practice, babies not breastfed by their mothers consumed artificial food far more frequently than they drank a wet nurse's milk. For more on the history of wet nursing in the United States see Janet Golden, A Social History of Wet Nursing in America: From Breast to Bottle (Cambridge, 1996). General histories of wet nursing are Valerie Fildes, Wet Nursing: A History from Antiquity to the Present (New York, 1988) and M. Livia Osborn, "The Rent Breasts: A Brief History of Wet Nursing," Midwife, Health Visitor and Communiry Nurse 15 (1979): 302-306; 347-348. For more on the history of infant feeding and why mothers, in significant numbers, began using human milk substitutes in the late nineteenth century see Jacqueline H. Wolf, " 'Don't Kill Your Baby': Feeding Infants in Chicago, 1903-1924," Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 53 (July 1998): 219-253; Jacqueline H. Wolf, "Discarding Nature's Plan: A Social History of Infant Feeding in Chicago, 1892-1938," unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Illinois at Chicago, 1998; and Rima D. Apple, Mothers & Medicine: A Social History of Infant Feeding 1890-1950 (Madison, 1987).
7. Most doctors preferred wet nurses over artificial food but, in practice, babies not breastfed by their mothers consumed artificial food far more frequently than they drank a wet nurse's milk. For more on the history of wet nursing in the United States see Janet Golden, A Social History of Wet Nursing in America: From Breast to Bottle (Cambridge, 1996). General histories of wet nursing are Valerie Fildes, Wet Nursing: A History from Antiquity to the Present (New York, 1988) and M. Livia Osborn, "The Rent Breasts: A Brief History of Wet Nursing," Midwife, Health Visitor and Communiry Nurse 15 (1979): 302-306; 347-348. For more on the history of infant feeding and why mothers, in significant numbers, began using human milk substitutes in the late nineteenth century see Jacqueline H. Wolf, " 'Don't Kill Your Baby': Feeding Infants in Chicago, 1903-1924," Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 53 (July 1998): 219-253; Jacqueline H. Wolf, "Discarding Nature's Plan: A Social History of Infant Feeding in Chicago, 1892-1938," unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Illinois at Chicago, 1998; and Rima D. Apple, Mothers & Medicine: A Social History of Infant Feeding 1890-1950 (Madison, 1987).
8. Leonard Keene Hirshberg, "What You Ought to Know About Your Baby: Part V. The Bottle-Fed Baby," The Delineator 73 (February 1909): 262. Hirshberg calling human milk a "medicine" as an allusion to the anti-infection factors in human milk, well known to pediatricians practicing at the start of the twentieth century. See, for example, Francis P. Denny, "Value of Small Quantities of Human Milk in the Treatment of Infantile Atrophy and the Infections of Infants," Journal of the American Medical Association 47 (8 December 1906): 1904-1909; Francis P. Denny, "Human Milk in the Treatment of Various Infections," Boston Medical and Surgical Journal 160 (11 February 1909): 161-163; and J. Madison Taylor, "The Curative Powers in Human Milk," in American Academy of Medicine, Prevention of Infant Mortality: Being the Papers and Discussions of a Conference Held at New Haven Conn., November 11, 12, 1909, 66-73. For contemporary studies of the ability of human milk to fend off disease see Lois D. W. Arnold and Elaine Larson, "Immunological benefits of breast milk in relation to human milk banking," American Journal of Infection Control 21 (October 1993): 235-236; and Armond S. Goldman, "The immune system of human milk: antimicrobial, antiinflammatory and immunomodulating properties," The Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal, 12 (August 1993): 664-669.
9. Leonard Keene Hirshberg, "What You Ought to Know About Your Baby: Part V. The Bottle-Fed Baby," The Delineator 73 (February 1909): 262. Hirshberg calling human milk a "medicine" as an allusion to the anti-infection factors in human milk, well known to pediatricians practicing at the start of the twentieth century. See, for example, Francis P. Denny, "Value of Small Quantities of Human Milk in the Treatment of Infantile Atrophy and the Infections of Infants," Journal of the American Medical Association 47 (8 December 1906): 1904-1909; Francis P. Denny, "Human Milk in the Treatment of Various Infections," Boston Medical and Surgical Journal 160 (11 February 1909): 161-163; and J. Madison Taylor, "The Curative Powers in Human Milk," in American Academy of Medicine, Prevention of Infant Mortality: Being the Papers and Discussions of a Conference Held at New Haven Conn., November 11, 12, 1909, 66-73. For contemporary studies of the ability of human milk to fend off disease see Lois D. W. Arnold and Elaine Larson, "Immunological benefits of breast milk in relation to human milk banking," American Journal of Infection Control 21 (October 1993): 235-236; and Armond S. Goldman, "The immune system of human milk: antimicrobial, antiinflammatory and immunomodulating properties," The Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal, 12 (August 1993): 664-669.
10. Leonard Keene Hirshberg, "What You Ought to Know About Your Baby: Part V. The Bottle-Fed Baby," The Delineator 73 (February 1909): 262. Hirshberg calling human milk a "medicine" as an allusion to the anti-infection factors in human milk, well known to pediatricians practicing at the start of the twentieth century. See, for example, Francis P. Denny, "Value of Small Quantities of Human Milk in the Treatment of Infantile Atrophy and the Infections of Infants," Journal of the American Medical Association 47 (8 December 1906): 1904-1909; Francis P. Denny, "Human Milk in the Treatment of Various Infections," Boston Medical and Surgical Journal 160 (11 February 1909): 161-163; and J. Madison Taylor, "The Curative Powers in Human Milk," in American Academy of Medicine, Prevention of Infant Mortality: Being the Papers and Discussions of a Conference Held at New Haven Conn., November 11, 12, 1909, 66-73. For contemporary studies of the ability of human milk to fend off disease see Lois D. W. Arnold and Elaine Larson, "Immunological benefits of breast milk in relation to human milk banking," American Journal of Infection Control 21 (October 1993): 235-236; and Armond S. Goldman, "The immune system of human milk: antimicrobial, antiinflammatory and immunomodulating properties," The Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal, 12 (August 1993): 664-669.
11. Leonard Keene Hirshberg, "What You Ought to Know About Your Baby: Part V. The Bottle-Fed Baby," The Delineator 73 (February 1909): 262. Hirshberg calling human milk a "medicine" as an allusion to the anti-infection factors in human milk, well known to pediatricians practicing at the start of the twentieth century. See, for example, Francis P. Denny, "Value of Small Quantities of Human Milk in the Treatment of Infantile Atrophy and the Infections of Infants," Journal of the American Medical Association 47 (8 December 1906): 1904-1909; Francis P. Denny, "Human Milk in the Treatment of Various Infections," Boston Medical and Surgical Journal 160 (11 February 1909): 161-163; and J. Madison Taylor, "The Curative Powers in Human Milk," in American Academy of Medicine, Prevention of Infant Mortality: Being the Papers and Discussions of a Conference Held at New Haven Conn., November 11, 12, 1909, 66-73. For contemporary studies of the ability of human milk to fend off disease see Lois D. W. Arnold and Elaine Larson, "Immunological benefits of breast milk in relation to human milk banking," American Journal of Infection Control 21 (October 1993): 235-236; and Armond S. Goldman, "The immune system of human milk: antimicrobial, antiinflammatory and immunomodulating properties," The Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal, 12 (August 1993): 664-669.
12. Leonard Keene Hirshberg, "What You Ought to Know About Your Baby: Part V. The Bottle-Fed Baby," The Delineator 73 (February 1909): 262. Hirshberg calling human milk a "medicine" as an allusion to the anti-infection factors in human milk, well known to pediatricians practicing at the start of the twentieth century. See, for example, Francis P. Denny, "Value of Small Quantities of Human Milk in the Treatment of Infantile Atrophy and the Infections of Infants," Journal of the American Medical Association 47 (8 December 1906): 1904-1909; Francis P. Denny, "Human Milk in the Treatment of Various Infections," Boston Medical and Surgical Journal 160 (11 February 1909): 161-163; and J. Madison Taylor, "The Curative Powers in Human Milk," in American Academy of Medicine, Prevention of Infant Mortality: Being the Papers and Discussions of a Conference Held at New Haven Conn., November 11, 12, 1909, 66-73. For contemporary studies of the ability of human milk to fend off disease see Lois D. W. Arnold and Elaine Larson, "Immunological benefits of breast milk in relation to human milk banking," American Journal of Infection Control 21 (October 1993): 235-236; and Armond S. Goldman, "The immune system of human milk: antimicrobial, antiinflammatory and immunomodulating properties," The Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal, 12 (August 1993): 664-669.
13. Leonard Keene Hirshberg, "What You Ought to Know About Your Baby: Part V. The Bottle-Fed Baby," The Delineator 73 (February 1909): 262. Hirshberg calling human milk a "medicine" as an allusion to the anti-infection factors in human milk, well known to pediatricians practicing at the start of the twentieth century. See, for example, Francis P. Denny, "Value of Small Quantities of Human Milk in the Treatment of Infantile Atrophy and the Infections of Infants," Journal of the American Medical Association 47 (8 December 1906): 1904-1909; Francis P. Denny, "Human Milk in the Treatment of Various Infections," Boston Medical and Surgical Journal 160 (11 February 1909): 161-163; and J. Madison Taylor, "The Curative Powers in Human Milk," in American Academy of Medicine, Prevention of Infant Mortality: Being the Papers and Discussions of a Conference Held at New Haven Conn., November 11, 12, 1909, 66-73. For contemporary studies of the ability of human milk to fend off disease see Lois D. W. Arnold and Elaine Larson, "Immunological benefits of breast milk in relation to human milk banking," American Journal of Infection Control 21 (October 1993): 235-236; and Armond S. Goldman, "The immune system of human milk: antimicrobial, antiinflammatory and immunomodulating properties," The Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal, 12 (August 1993): 664-669.
14. Cow's milk - adulterated, dirty, spoiled, and bacteria-laden in this era before pure food laws, refrigeration, pasteurization, and the sealing of milk in individual bottles-posed a grave threat to every infant who consumed it. For more on the dreadful state of the urban milk supply in the late nineteenth-and early twentieth-centuries see Wolf, " 'Don't Kill Your Baby,' " 226-230; Wolf, "Discarding Nature's Plan," 27-34; Judith Walzer Leavitt, The Healthiest City: Milwaukee and the Politics of Health Reform (Madison, 1996), 156-189; Julie Miller, "To Stop the Slaughter of the Babies: Nathan Straus and the Drive for Pasteurized Milk, 1893-1920," New York History 74 (April 1993): 159-184; Richard A. Meckel, Save the Babies: American Public Health Reform and the Prevention of Infant Mortality, 1850-1929 (Baltimore and London, 1990), 62-91; and Manfred J. Waserman, "Henry L. Coit and the Certified Milk Movement in the Development of Modern Pediatrics," Bulletin of the History of Medicine (July-August 1972): 359-90. During this era, most bottle-fed babies consumed unpasteurized cow's milk. If a mother did mix cow's milk with anything it was usually with a commercial human milk substitute. Composed of starches and malt sugars to be mixed with either cow's milk or water or both, these infant foods were widely available in drugstores. For more on commercial infant foods and what they contained see Elisabeth Robinson Scovil, "The Truth About Baby Foods," Ladies' Home Journal 19 (August 1902): 26.
15. Cow's milk - adulterated, dirty, spoiled, and bacteria-laden in this era before pure food laws, refrigeration, pasteurization, and the sealing of milk in individual bottles-posed a grave threat to every infant who consumed it. For more on the dreadful state of the urban milk supply in the late nineteenth-and early twentieth-centuries see Wolf, " 'Don't Kill Your Baby,' " 226-230; Wolf, "Discarding Nature's Plan," 27-34; Judith Walzer Leavitt, The Healthiest City: Milwaukee and the Politics of Health Reform (Madison, 1996), 156-189; Julie Miller, "To Stop the Slaughter of the Babies: Nathan Straus and the Drive for Pasteurized Milk, 1893-1920," New York History 74 (April 1993): 159-184; Richard A. Meckel, Save the Babies: American Public Health Reform and the Prevention of Infant Mortality, 1850-1929 (Baltimore and London, 1990), 62-91; and Manfred J. Waserman, "Henry L. Coit and the Certified Milk Movement in the Development of Modern Pediatrics," Bulletin of the History of Medicine (July-August 1972): 359-90. During this era, most bottle-fed babies consumed unpasteurized cow's milk. If a mother did mix cow's milk with anything it was usually with a commercial human milk substitute. Composed of starches and malt sugars to be mixed with either cow's milk or water or both, these infant foods were widely available in drugstores. For more on commercial infant foods and what they contained see Elisabeth Robinson Scovil, "The Truth About Baby Foods," Ladies' Home Journal 19 (August 1902): 26.
16. Cow's milk - adulterated, dirty, spoiled, and bacteria-laden in this era before pure food laws, refrigeration, pasteurization, and the sealing of milk in individual bottles-posed a grave threat to every infant who consumed it. For more on the dreadful state of the urban milk supply in the late nineteenth-and early twentieth-centuries see Wolf, " 'Don't Kill Your Baby,' " 226-230; Wolf, "Discarding Nature's Plan," 27-34; Judith Walzer Leavitt, The Healthiest City: Milwaukee and the Politics of Health Reform (Madison, 1996), 156-189; Julie Miller, "To Stop the Slaughter of the Babies: Nathan Straus and the Drive for Pasteurized Milk, 1893-1920," New York History 74 (April 1993): 159-184; Richard A. Meckel, Save the Babies: American Public Health Reform and the Prevention of Infant Mortality, 1850-1929 (Baltimore and London, 1990), 62-91; and Manfred J. Waserman, "Henry L. Coit and the Certified Milk Movement in the Development of Modern Pediatrics," Bulletin of the History of Medicine (July-August 1972): 359-90. During this era, most bottle-fed babies consumed unpasteurized cow's milk. If a mother did mix cow's milk with anything it was usually with a commercial human milk substitute. Composed of starches and malt sugars to be mixed with either cow's milk or water or both, these infant foods were widely available in drugstores. For more on commercial infant foods and what they contained see Elisabeth Robinson Scovil, "The Truth About Baby Foods," Ladies' Home Journal 19 (August 1902): 26.
17. Cow's milk - adulterated, dirty, spoiled, and bacteria-laden in this era before pure food laws, refrigeration, pasteurization, and the sealing of milk in individual bottles-posed a grave threat to every infant who consumed it. For more on the dreadful state of the urban milk supply in the late nineteenth-and early twentieth-centuries see Wolf, " 'Don't Kill Your Baby,' " 226-230; Wolf, "Discarding Nature's Plan," 27-34; Judith Walzer Leavitt, The Healthiest City: Milwaukee and the Politics of Health Reform (Madison, 1996), 156-189; Julie Miller, "To Stop the Slaughter of the Babies: Nathan Straus and the Drive for Pasteurized Milk, 1893-1920," New York History 74 (April 1993): 159-184; Richard A. Meckel, Save the Babies: American Public Health Reform and the Prevention of Infant Mortality, 1850-1929 (Baltimore and London, 1990), 62-91; and Manfred J. Waserman, "Henry L. Coit and the Certified Milk Movement in the Development of Modern Pediatrics," Bulletin of the History of Medicine (July-August 1972): 359-90. During this era, most bottle-fed babies consumed unpasteurized cow's milk. If a mother did mix cow's milk with anything it was usually with a commercial human milk substitute. Composed of starches and malt sugars to be mixed with either cow's milk or water or both, these infant foods were widely available in drugstores. For more on commercial infant foods and what they contained see Elisabeth Robinson Scovil, "The Truth About Baby Foods," Ladies' Home Journal 19 (August 1902): 26.
18. Cow's milk - adulterated, dirty, spoiled, and bacteria-laden in this era before pure food laws, refrigeration, pasteurization, and the sealing of milk in individual bottles-posed a grave threat to every infant who consumed it. For more on the dreadful state of the urban milk supply in the late nineteenth-and early twentieth-centuries see Wolf, " 'Don't Kill Your Baby,' " 226-230; Wolf, "Discarding Nature's Plan," 27-34; Judith Walzer Leavitt, The Healthiest City: Milwaukee and the Politics of Health Reform (Madison, 1996), 156-189; Julie Miller, "To Stop the Slaughter of the Babies: Nathan Straus and the Drive for Pasteurized Milk, 1893-1920," New York History 74 (April 1993): 159-184; Richard A. Meckel, Save the Babies: American Public Health Reform and the Prevention of Infant Mortality, 1850-1929 (Baltimore and London, 1990), 62-91; and Manfred J. Waserman, "Henry L. Coit and the Certified Milk Movement in the Development of Modern Pediatrics," Bulletin of the History of Medicine (July-August 1972): 359-90. During this era, most bottle-fed babies consumed unpasteurized cow's milk. If a mother did mix cow's milk with anything it was usually with a commercial human milk substitute. Composed of starches and malt sugars to be mixed with either cow's milk or water or both, these infant foods were widely available in drugstores. For more on commercial infant foods and what they contained see Elisabeth Robinson Scovil, "The Truth About Baby Foods," Ladies' Home Journal 19 (August 1902): 26.
19. Cow's milk - adulterated, dirty, spoiled, and bacteria-laden in this era before pure food laws, refrigeration, pasteurization, and the sealing of milk in individual bottles-posed a grave threat to every infant who consumed it. For more on the dreadful state of the urban milk supply in the late nineteenth-and early twentieth-centuries see Wolf, " 'Don't Kill Your Baby,' " 226-230; Wolf, "Discarding Nature's Plan," 27-34; Judith Walzer Leavitt, The Healthiest City: Milwaukee and the Politics of Health Reform (Madison, 1996), 156-189; Julie Miller, "To Stop the Slaughter of the Babies: Nathan Straus and the Drive for Pasteurized Milk, 1893-1920," New York History 74 (April 1993): 159-184; Richard A. Meckel, Save the Babies: American Public Health Reform and the Prevention of Infant Mortality, 1850-1929 (Baltimore and London, 1990), 62-91; and Manfred J. Waserman, "Henry L. Coit and the Certified Milk Movement in the Development of Modern Pediatrics," Bulletin of the History of Medicine (July-August 1972): 359-90. During this era, most bottle-fed babies consumed unpasteurized cow's milk. If a mother did mix cow's milk with anything it was usually with a commercial human milk substitute. Composed of starches and malt sugars to be mixed with either cow's milk or water or both, these infant foods were widely available in drugstores. For more on commercial infant foods and what they contained see Elisabeth Robinson Scovil, "The Truth About Baby Foods," Ladies' Home Journal 19 (August 1902): 26.
20. Cow's milk - adulterated, dirty, spoiled, and bacteria-laden in this era before pure food laws, refrigeration, pasteurization, and the sealing of milk in individual bottles-posed a grave threat to every infant who consumed it. For more on the dreadful state of the urban milk supply in the late nineteenth-and early twentieth-centuries see Wolf, " 'Don't Kill Your Baby,' " 226-230; Wolf, "Discarding Nature's Plan," 27-34; Judith Walzer Leavitt, The Healthiest City: Milwaukee and the Politics of Health Reform (Madison, 1996), 156-189; Julie Miller, "To Stop the Slaughter of the Babies: Nathan Straus and the Drive for Pasteurized Milk, 1893-1920," New York History 74 (April 1993): 159-184; Richard A. Meckel, Save the Babies: American Public Health Reform and the Prevention of Infant Mortality, 1850-1929 (Baltimore and London, 1990), 62-91; and Manfred J. Waserman, "Henry L. Coit and the Certified Milk Movement in the Development of Modern Pediatrics," Bulletin of the History of Medicine (July-August 1972): 359-90. During this era, most bottle-fed babies consumed unpasteurized cow's milk. If a mother did mix cow's milk with anything it was usually with a commercial human milk substitute. Composed of starches and malt sugars to be mixed with either cow's milk or water or both, these infant foods were widely available in drugstores. For more on commercial infant foods and what they contained see Elisabeth Robinson Scovil, "The Truth About Baby Foods," Ladies' Home Journal 19 (August 1902): 26.
21. W. S. Christopher, "Feeding the Healthy Infant," The Chicago Medical Recorder 3 (November 1892): 727-728.
22. Isaac A. Abt, Baby Doctor (New York, 1944), 111.
23. Rima D. Apple, in her history of infant feeding in the United States, Mothers & Medicine, dismisses wet nursing as an insignificant practice in the late nineteenth century. She argues that doctors preferred artificial food to the "physically, psychologically, and morally" imperfect wet nurse when a mother did not breastfeed. I have found just the opposite - that those doctors were a small minority and physicians, medical charities, and government health and welfare agencies consistently recommended, well into the 1920s, the use of a wet nurse when a mother did not breastfeed despite wet nurses' foibles.
24. Janet Golden, in the only book-length study of wet nursing in the United States, examines changing patterns in human milk distribution and the accompanying change in attitude toward both the milk and its provider. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the milk provided by wet nurses was deemed a valuable, albeit volatile, substance sold by "mercenary hirelings." The terms "mercenary" or "mercenary-hireling" were two of the more common epithets hurled at wet nurses, even by the doctors who urged their use. See, for example, Samuel S. Adams, "How Shall We Feed the Baby?" Archives of Pediatrics 2 (May 1885): 269-282 and Joseph Edcil Winters, "The Relative Influences of Maternal and Wet-Nursing on Mother and Child," The Medical Record 30 (6 November 1886): 508-509. By the second quarter of the twentieth century, as human milk stations opened to distribute human milk in bottles to premature and sick babies, breast milk became a seldom-needed commodity sold by thrifty working-class women. In the last quarter of the twentieth century human milk has become, like blood, a priceless gift donated by selfless individuals. Golden, A Social History of Wet Nursing. Because HIV can be transmitted through breast milk - casting suspicion once again upon human milk providers and their product - now even most human milk banks have closed. The few that do exist test their donors carefully. See Lois D. W. Arnold, "How to Order Banked Donor Milk in the United States: What the Health Care Provider Needs to Know," Journal of Human Lactation 14 (1998): 65-67.
25. Janet Golden, in the only book-length study of wet nursing in the United States, examines changing patterns in human milk distribution and the accompanying change in attitude toward both the milk and its provider. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the milk provided by wet nurses was deemed a valuable, albeit volatile, substance sold by "mercenary hirelings." The terms "mercenary" or "mercenary-hireling" were two of the more common epithets hurled at wet nurses, even by the doctors who urged their use. See, for example, Samuel S. Adams, "How Shall We Feed the Baby?" Archives of Pediatrics 2 (May 1885): 269-282 and Joseph Edcil Winters, "The Relative Influences of Maternal and Wet-Nursing on Mother and Child," The Medical Record 30 (6 November 1886): 508-509. By the second quarter of the twentieth century, as human milk stations opened to distribute human milk in bottles to premature and sick babies, breast milk became a seldom-needed commodity sold by thrifty working-class women. In the last quarter of the twentieth century human milk has become, like blood, a priceless gift donated by selfless individuals. Golden, A Social History of Wet Nursing. Because HIV can be transmitted through breast milk - casting suspicion once again upon human milk providers and their product - now even most human milk banks have closed. The few that do exist test their donors carefully. See Lois D. W. Arnold, "How to Order Banked Donor Milk in the United States: What the Health Care Provider Needs to Know," Journal of Human Lactation 14 (1998): 65-67.
26. Janet Golden, in the only book-length study of wet nursing in the United States, examines changing patterns in human milk distribution and the accompanying change in attitude toward both the milk and its provider. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the milk provided by wet nurses was deemed a valuable, albeit volatile, substance sold by "mercenary hirelings." The terms "mercenary" or "mercenary-hireling" were two of the more common epithets hurled at wet nurses, even by the doctors who urged their use. See, for example, Samuel S. Adams, "How Shall We Feed the Baby?" Archives of Pediatrics 2 (May 1885): 269-282 and Joseph Edcil Winters, "The Relative Influences of Maternal and Wet-Nursing on Mother and Child," The Medical Record 30 (6 November 1886): 508-509. By the second quarter of the twentieth century, as human milk stations opened to distribute human milk in bottles to premature and sick babies, breast milk became a seldom-needed commodity sold by thrifty working-class women. In the last quarter of the twentieth century human milk has become, like blood, a priceless gift donated by selfless individuals. Golden, A Social History of Wet Nursing. Because HIV can be transmitted through breast milk - casting suspicion once again upon human milk providers and their product - now even most human milk banks have closed. The few that do exist test their donors carefully. See Lois D. W. Arnold, "How to Order Banked Donor Milk in the United States: What the Health Care Provider Needs to Know," Journal of Human Lactation 14 (1998): 65-67.
27. Use of the conventional wet nurse waned slowly in proportion to the growing safety of artificial food. This occurred in several stages-first with the advent of clean water supplies, then with assorted successful efforts to halt the adulteration of the urban milk supply, next with the legal requirement that all milk sold be bottled, sealed, and pasteurized, and, finally, with consumers' access to refrigeration. In Chicago, citizens first glimpsed the possibility of clean drinking water in 1889 when the Illinois legislature authorized construction of the twenty-five-mile-long Sanitary and Ship Canal to drain the city's waste away from Lake Michigan, the city's water supply. Workers began building the Canal in 1892. But the water was not completely safe until the city began chlorinating all drinking water in 1912 and, finally, filtering it in 1947. Donald L. Miller, City of the Century: The Epic of Chicago and the Making of America (New York, 1996), 426-432. Clean milk took almost as long to procure. It was more than thirty years - from 1892 to 1926 in Chicago - before the dairy industry acquiesced to reformers' demands to seal (in 1904), bottle (in 1912), and pasteurize milk (in 1916), to keep milk cold during shipping (in 1920), and to test cows for bovine tuberculosis (in 1926). See Wolf, "Discarding Nature's Plan," 9-63. In European countries the growing safety of artificial food had little to do with the decline in the use of wet nurses. George D. Sussman argues that in France, for example, the employment of wet nurses did not taper off as artificial food grew safer, rather it declined precipitously because of World War I. Wet nursing was such an entrenched practice in France, Sussman contends, that it took World War I-which disrupted access to wet nurses-to demonstrate to families that improved artificial food could safely replace wet nurses. George D. Sussman, Selling Mother's Milk: The Wet Nursing Business in France 1715-1914 (Urbana and Chicago, 1982), 182-183. Wet nursing, of course, was never the widespread custom in the United States that it was in France.
28. Use of the conventional wet nurse waned slowly in proportion to the growing safety of artificial food. This occurred in several stages-first with the advent of clean water supplies, then with assorted successful efforts to halt the adulteration of the urban milk supply, next with the legal requirement that all milk sold be bottled, sealed, and pasteurized, and, finally, with consumers' access to refrigeration. In Chicago, citizens first glimpsed the possibility of clean drinking water in 1889 when the Illinois legislature authorized construction of the twenty-five-mile-long Sanitary and Ship Canal to drain the city's waste away from Lake Michigan, the city's water supply. Workers began building the Canal in 1892. But the water was not completely safe until the city began chlorinating all drinking water in 1912 and, finally, filtering it in 1947. Donald L. Miller, City of the Century: The Epic of Chicago and the Making of America (New York, 1996), 426-432. Clean milk took almost as long to procure. It was more than thirty years - from 1892 to 1926 in Chicago - before the dairy industry acquiesced to reformers' demands to seal (in 1904), bottle (in 1912), and pasteurize milk (in 1916), to keep milk cold during shipping (in 1920), and to test cows for bovine tuberculosis (in 1926). See Wolf, "Discarding Nature's Plan," 9-63. In European countries the growing safety of artificial food had little to do with the decline in the use of wet nurses. George D. Sussman argues that in France, for example, the employment of wet nurses did not taper off as artificial food grew safer, rather it declined precipitously because of World War I. Wet nursing was such an entrenched practice in France, Sussman contends, that it took World War I-which disrupted access to wet nurses-to demonstrate to families that improved artificial food could safely replace wet nurses. George D. Sussman, Selling Mother's Milk: The Wet Nursing Business in France 1715-1914 (Urbana and Chicago, 1982), 182-183. Wet nursing, of course, was never the widespread custom in the United States that it was in France.
29. Use of the conventional wet nurse waned slowly in proportion to the growing safety of artificial food. This occurred in several stages-first with the advent of clean water supplies, then with assorted successful efforts to halt the adulteration of the urban milk supply, next with the legal requirement that all milk sold be bottled, sealed, and pasteurized, and, finally, with consumers' access to refrigeration. In Chicago, citizens first glimpsed the possibility of clean drinking water in 1889 when the Illinois legislature authorized construction of the twenty-five-mile-long Sanitary and Ship Canal to drain the city's waste away from Lake Michigan, the city's water supply. Workers began building the Canal in 1892. But the water was not completely safe until the city began chlorinating all drinking water in 1912 and, finally, filtering it in 1947. Donald L. Miller, City of the Century: The Epic of Chicago and the Making of America (New York, 1996), 426-432. Clean milk took almost as long to procure. It was more than thirty years - from 1892 to 1926 in Chicago - before the dairy industry acquiesced to reformers' demands to seal (in 1904), bottle (in 1912), and pasteurize milk (in 1916), to keep milk cold during shipping (in 1920), and to test cows for bovine tuberculosis (in 1926). See Wolf, "Discarding Nature's Plan," 9-63. In European countries the growing safety of artificial food had little to do with the decline in the use of wet nurses. George D. Sussman argues that in France, for example, the employment of wet nurses did not taper off as artificial food grew safer, rather it declined precipitously because of World War I. Wet nursing was such an entrenched practice in France, Sussman contends, that it took World War I-which disrupted access to wet nurses-to demonstrate to families that improved artificial food could safely replace wet nurses. George D. Sussman, Selling Mother's Milk: The Wet Nursing Business in France 1715-1914 (Urbana and Chicago, 1982), 182-183. Wet nursing, of course, was never the widespread custom in the United States that it was in France.
30. Precise breastfeeding rates in the late nineteenth-and early twentieth-century United States are not known. But as early as 1889 some New England physicians complained that more than half of all mothers did not "properly nurse their offspring." See "The Decline of Suckling Power Among American Women," Babyhood 5 (March 1889): 111. The medical community in Chicago was so alarmed by the trend that beginning in 1908 the Department of Health sent out public health nurses to interview mothers of newboms about their infant feeding habits. In 1912, when more than half the women who had given birth in Chicago that year were interviewed, only 39 percent of Chicago's mothers said that they exclusively breastfed their newborns. See Wolf, "Discarding Nature's Plan," 244-246 and Wolf, " 'Don't Kill Your Baby,' " 231-232, 234-235.
31. Precise breastfeeding rates in the late nineteenth-and early twentieth-century United States are not known. But as early as 1889 some New England physicians complained that more than half of all mothers did not "properly nurse their offspring." See "The Decline of Suckling Power Among American Women," Babyhood 5 (March 1889): 111. The medical community in Chicago was so alarmed by the trend that beginning in 1908 the Department of Health sent out public health nurses to interview mothers of newboms about their infant feeding habits. In 1912, when more than half the women who had given birth in Chicago that year were interviewed, only 39 percent of Chicago's mothers said that they exclusively breastfed their newborns. See Wolf, "Discarding Nature's Plan," 244-246 and Wolf, " 'Don't Kill Your Baby,' " 231-232, 234-235.
32. Precise breastfeeding rates in the late nineteenth-and early twentieth-century United States are not known. But as early as 1889 some New England physicians complained that more than half of all mothers did not "properly nurse their offspring." See "The Decline of Suckling Power Among American Women," Babyhood 5 (March 1889): 111. The medical community in Chicago was so alarmed by the trend that beginning in 1908 the Department of Health sent out public health nurses to interview mothers of newboms about their infant feeding habits. In 1912, when more than half the women who had given birth in Chicago that year were interviewed, only 39 percent of Chicago's mothers said that they exclusively breastfed their newborns. See Wolf, "Discarding Nature's Plan," 244-246 and Wolf, " 'Don't Kill Your Baby,' " 231-232, 234-235.
33. Golden, A Social History of Wet Nursing, 3.
34. Medical journal articles (see, for example, issues of Archives of Pediatrics, Journal of Pediatrics, and American Journal of Diseases of Children), newspaper help-wanted ads, doctors' anecdotes, and mothers' letters to magazines (see, for example, issues of Babyhood, Ladies' Home Journal, and New Crusade), confirm that wet nurses were hired well into the twentieth century. One rich source of a physician's personal experience with wet nurses is Isaac Abt's autobiography which he wrote toward the end of his life: Abt, Baby Doctor. Infant-care books and pamphlets written as late as the 1920s rarely failed to mention wet nurses as an infant-feeding option. See, for example, U. S. Department of Labor Children's Bureau, Infant Care (Washington, D.C., 1927), 59-60. Infant Care was an extremely influential booklet. Between 1914 and 1921 alone, Children's Bureau workers mailed almost 1,500,000 copies of the pamphlet to women of every conceivable ethnic, racial, geographic, educational, and class background in the United States. In addition, these women undoubtedly shared the booklet with friends and relatives. Molly Ladd-Taylor, Raising a Baby the Government Way: Mothers' Letters to the Children's Bureau, 1915-1932 (New Brunswick, NJ, 1986), 2-3. For more on the work of the U.S. Children's Bureau see Kriste Lindenmeyer, "A Right to Childhood": The U.S. Children's Bureau and Child Welfare, 1912-46 (Urbana and Chicago, 1997).
35. Medical journal articles (see, for example, issues of Archives of Pediatrics, Journal of Pediatrics, and American Journal of Diseases of Children), newspaper help-wanted ads, doctors' anecdotes, and mothers' letters to magazines (see, for example, issues of Babyhood, Ladies' Home Journal, and New Crusade), confirm that wet nurses were hired well into the twentieth century. One rich source of a physician's personal experience with wet nurses is Isaac Abt's autobiography which he wrote toward the end of his life: Abt, Baby Doctor. Infant-care books and pamphlets written as late as the 1920s rarely failed to mention wet nurses as an infant-feeding option. See, for example, U. S. Department of Labor Children's Bureau, Infant Care (Washington, D.C., 1927), 59-60. Infant Care was an extremely influential booklet. Between 1914 and 1921 alone, Children's Bureau workers mailed almost 1,500,000 copies of the pamphlet to women of every conceivable ethnic, racial, geographic, educational, and class background in the United States. In addition, these women undoubtedly shared the booklet with friends and relatives. Molly Ladd-Taylor, Raising a Baby the Government Way: Mothers' Letters to the Children's Bureau, 1915-1932 (New Brunswick, NJ, 1986), 2-3. For more on the work of the U.S. Children's Bureau see Kriste Lindenmeyer, "A Right to Childhood": The U.S. Children's Bureau and Child Welfare, 1912-46 (Urbana and Chicago, 1997).
36. Medical journal articles (see, for example, issues of Archives of Pediatrics, Journal of Pediatrics, and American Journal of Diseases of Children), newspaper help-wanted ads, doctors' anecdotes, and mothers' letters to magazines (see, for example, issues of Babyhood, Ladies' Home Journal, and New Crusade), confirm that wet nurses were hired well into the twentieth century. One rich source of a physician's personal experience with wet nurses is Isaac Abt's autobiography which he wrote toward the end of his life: Abt, Baby Doctor. Infant-care books and pamphlets written as late as the 1920s rarely failed to mention wet nurses as an infant-feeding option. See, for example, U. S. Department of Labor Children's Bureau, Infant Care (Washington, D.C., 1927), 59-60. Infant Care was an extremely influential booklet. Between 1914 and 1921 alone, Children's Bureau workers mailed almost 1,500,000 copies of the pamphlet to women of every conceivable ethnic, racial, geographic, educational, and class background in the United States. In addition, these women undoubtedly shared the booklet with friends and relatives. Molly Ladd-Taylor, Raising a Baby the Government Way: Mothers' Letters to the Children's Bureau, 1915-1932 (New Brunswick, NJ, 1986), 2-3. For more on the work of the U.S. Children's Bureau see Kriste Lindenmeyer, "A Right to Childhood": The U.S. Children's Bureau and Child Welfare, 1912-46 (Urbana and Chicago, 1997).
37. Medical journal articles (see, for example, issues of Archives of Pediatrics, Journal of Pediatrics, and American Journal of Diseases of Children), newspaper help-wanted ads, doctors' anecdotes, and mothers' letters to magazines (see, for example, issues of Babyhood, Ladies' Home Journal, and New Crusade), confirm that wet nurses were hired well into the twentieth century. One rich source of a physician's personal experience with wet nurses is Isaac Abt's autobiography which he wrote toward the end of his life: Abt, Baby Doctor. Infant-care books and pamphlets written as late as the 1920s rarely failed to mention wet nurses as an infant-feeding option. See, for example, U. S. Department of Labor Children's Bureau, Infant Care (Washington, D.C., 1927), 59-60. Infant Care was an extremely influential booklet. Between 1914 and 1921 alone, Children's Bureau workers mailed almost 1,500,000 copies of the pamphlet to women of every conceivable ethnic, racial, geographic, educational, and class background in the United States. In addition, these women undoubtedly shared the booklet with friends and relatives. Molly Ladd-Taylor, Raising a Baby the Government Way: Mothers' Letters to the Children's Bureau, 1915-1932 (New Brunswick, NJ, 1986), 2-3. For more on the work of the U.S. Children's Bureau see Kriste Lindenmeyer, "A Right to Childhood": The U.S. Children's Bureau and Child Welfare, 1912-46 (Urbana and Chicago, 1997).
38. Medical journal articles (see, for example, issues of Archives of Pediatrics, Journal of Pediatrics, and American Journal of Diseases of Children), newspaper help-wanted ads, doctors' anecdotes, and mothers' letters to magazines (see, for example, issues of Babyhood, Ladies' Home Journal, and New Crusade), confirm that wet nurses were hired well into the twentieth century. One rich source of a physician's personal experience with wet nurses is Isaac Abt's autobiography which he wrote toward the end of his life: Abt, Baby Doctor. Infant-care books and pamphlets written as late as the 1920s rarely failed to mention wet nurses as an infant-feeding option. See, for example, U. S. Department of Labor Children's Bureau, Infant Care (Washington, D.C., 1927), 59-60. Infant Care was an extremely influential booklet. Between 1914 and 1921 alone, Children's Bureau workers mailed almost 1,500,000 copies of the pamphlet to women of every conceivable ethnic, racial, geographic, educational, and class background in the United States. In addition, these women undoubtedly shared the booklet with friends and relatives. Molly Ladd-Taylor, Raising a Baby the Government Way: Mothers' Letters to the Children's Bureau, 1915-1932 (New Brunswick, NJ, 1986), 2-3. For more on the work of the U.S. Children's Bureau see Kriste Lindenmeyer, "A Right to Childhood": The U.S. Children's Bureau and Child Welfare, 1912-46 (Urbana and Chicago, 1997).
39. This is not to say that physicians in other areas did not hire wet nurses, they did. Pediatricians in Boston, for example, were particularly active in ensuring the constant availability of wet nurses via the Boston Wet Nurse Directory. See Janet Golden, "From Wet Nurse Directory to Milk Bank: The Delivery of Human Milk in Boston, 1909-1927," Bulletin of the History of Medicine 62 (Winter 1988): 589-605.
40. For more on DeLee see Jeffrey P. Baker, The Machine in the Nursery: Incubator Technology and the Origins of Newborn Intensive Care (Baltimore and London, 1996), 76-77, 114-122, 126-129; Judith Walzer Leavitt, "Joseph B. DeLee and the Practice of Preventive Obstetrics," American Journal of Public Health 78 (October 1988): 1353-61; and Ira Berkow, Maxwell Street: Survival in a Bazaar (New York, 1977), 167-81.
41. For more on DeLee see Jeffrey P. Baker, The Machine in the Nursery: Incubator Technology and the Origins of Newborn Intensive Care (Baltimore and London, 1996), 76-77, 114-122, 126-129; Judith Walzer Leavitt, "Joseph B. DeLee and the Practice of Preventive Obstetrics," American Journal of Public Health 78 (October 1988): 1353-61; and Ira Berkow, Maxwell Street: Survival in a Bazaar (New York, 1977), 167-81.
42. For more on DeLee see Jeffrey P. Baker, The Machine in the Nursery: Incubator Technology and the Origins of Newborn Intensive Care (Baltimore and London, 1996), 76-77, 114-122, 126-129; Judith Walzer Leavitt, "Joseph B. DeLee and the Practice of Preventive Obstetrics," American Journal of Public Health 78 (October 1988): 1353-61; and Ira Berkow, Maxwell Street: Survival in a Bazaar (New York, 1977), 167-81.
43. Joseph B. De Lee, "Infant Incubation, With the Presentation of a New Incubator and a Description of the System at the Chicago Lying-in Hospital," Quarterly Bulletin of Northwestern University Medical School 5 (September 1903): 259-260. Physicians now know that the milk of women whose babies are born prematurely differs significantly from those who deliver at term and is much better suited to the unique needs of the premature infant. "Preterm" milk, for example, has a much higher concentration of anti-infection factors. See Margit Hamosh, "Digestion in the Premature Infant: The Effects of Human Milk," Seminars in Perinatology 18 (December 1994): 485-491 and Armond S. Goldman, et. al, "Immunologic Protection of the Premature Newborn by Human Milk," Seminars in Perinatology 18 (December 1994): 495-501.
44. Joseph B. De Lee, "Infant Incubation, With the Presentation of a New Incubator and a Description of the System at the Chicago Lying-in Hospital," Quarterly Bulletin of Northwestern University Medical School 5 (September 1903): 259-260. Physicians now know that the milk of women whose babies are born prematurely differs significantly from those who deliver at term and is much better suited to the unique needs of the premature infant. "Preterm" milk, for example, has a much higher concentration of anti-infection factors. See Margit Hamosh, "Digestion in the Premature Infant: The Effects of Human Milk," Seminars in Perinatology 18 (December 1994): 485-491 and Armond S. Goldman, et. al, "Immunologic Protection of the Premature Newborn by Human Milk," Seminars in Perinatology 18 (December 1994): 495-501.
45. Joseph B. De Lee, "Infant Incubation, With the Presentation of a New Incubator and a Description of the System at the Chicago Lying-in Hospital," Quarterly Bulletin of Northwestern University Medical School 5 (September 1903): 259-260. Physicians now know that the milk of women whose babies are born prematurely differs significantly from those who deliver at term and is much better suited to the unique needs of the premature infant. "Preterm" milk, for example, has a much higher concentration of anti-infection factors. See Margit Hamosh, "Digestion in the Premature Infant: The Effects of Human Milk," Seminars in Perinatology 18 (December 1994): 485-491 and Armond S. Goldman, et. al, "Immunologic Protection of the Premature Newborn by Human Milk," Seminars in Perinatology 18 (December 1994): 495-501.
46. For more on the work of Julius Hess see Baker, The Machine in the Nursery, 168-74.
47. Evelyn C. Lundeen, "History of the Hortense Schoen Joseph Premature Station," The Voice of the Clinic 2 (Fall 1937): 8, Michael Reese Hospital Papers, Box 113, Folder 113.04, Chicago Jewish Archives, Spertus College, Chicago, Illinois; Julius H. Hess and Evelyn C. Lundeen, The Premature Infant: Medical and Nursing Care (Philadelphia, 1941), 153.
48. Evelyn C. Lundeen, "History of the Hortense Schoen Joseph Premature Station," The Voice of the Clinic 2 (Fall 1937): 8, Michael Reese Hospital Papers, Box 113, Folder 113.04, Chicago Jewish Archives, Spertus College, Chicago, Illinois; Julius H. Hess and Evelyn C. Lundeen, The Premature Infant: Medical and Nursing Care (Philadelphia, 1941), 153.
49. The Chicago City-Wide Plan for the Care of Premature Infants required that medical personnel attending a birth report any premature birth to the Board of Health within one hour. The Board responded to calls by sending a specially equipped ambulance and trained personnel to transport the baby from a home or hospital to the nearest premature infant station. The Plan also required that premature infants be fed only breast milk, preferably the milk of their mothers but, if not, the milk of wet nurses. Julius H. Hess, "The Chicago City-Wide Plan for the Care of Premature Infants," Journal of the American Medical Association 107 (8 August 1936): 400-403; Julius H. Hess, "Chicago Plan for Care of Premature Infants," Journal of the American Medical Association 146 (7 July 1951): 891-893.
50. The Chicago City-Wide Plan for the Care of Premature Infants required that medical personnel attending a birth report any premature birth to the Board of Health within one hour. The Board responded to calls by sending a specially equipped ambulance and trained personnel to transport the baby from a home or hospital to the nearest premature infant station. The Plan also required that premature infants be fed only breast milk, preferably the milk of their mothers but, if not, the milk of wet nurses. Julius H. Hess, "The Chicago City-Wide Plan for the Care of Premature Infants," Journal of the American Medical Association 107 (8 August 1936): 400-403; Julius H. Hess, "Chicago Plan for Care of Premature Infants," Journal of the American Medical Association 146 (7 July 1951): 891-893.
51. "Abstract of Discussion on Papers of Drs. Synder, Davis, Pisek, Jacobi and Southworth," Journal of the American Medical Association 51 (10 October 1908): 1224.
52. J. Lewis Smith, "Recent Improvements in Infant Feeding," Transactions of the American Pediatric Society 1 (1889): 87. In 1885 the charities that cared for orphaned babies in New York City reported that between 1881 and 1885, 27 percent of the foundlings breast-fed by wet nurses died. But when caretakers fed foundlings artificially, 70 percent died during their first year and 90 percent died before their second birthday. Jerome Walker, "Is Nursing by the Mother to be Encouraged?" Archives of Pediatrics 2 (January 1885): 2. Although it is difficult to assess the "normal" death rate of infants during this era, the death rate of New York's wet-nursed orphans fell within the 15 to 30 percent range that demographers now estimate was the mid-nineteenth century mortality for all babies. Meckel, Save the Babies, 1. As Richard Meckel explains, both poor record keeping and few surviving records preclude precise estimates of infant death in the nineteenth century. Demographers nevertheless agree that 15 to 20 percent of babies died during their first year in most areas in the United States, while in some large cities and in some southern locales up to 30 percent of infants died. For more precise estimates of nineteenth-century infant mortality, particularly according to social and economic differences, see Samuel H. Preston and Michael R. Haines, Fatal Years: Child Mortality in Late Nineteenth-Century Americ a (Princeton, NJ, 1991), 49-136.
53. J. Lewis Smith, "Recent Improvements in Infant Feeding," Transactions of the American Pediatric Society 1 (1889): 87. In 1885 the charities that cared for orphaned babies in New York City reported that between 1881 and 1885, 27 percent of the foundlings breast-fed by wet nurses died. But when caretakers fed foundlings artificially, 70 percent died during their first year and 90 percent died before their second birthday. Jerome Walker, "Is Nursing by the Mother to be Encouraged?" Archives of Pediatrics 2 (January 1885): 2. Although it is difficult to assess the "normal" death rate of infants during this era, the death rate of New York's wet-nursed orphans fell within the 15 to 30 percent range that demographers now estimate was the mid-nineteenth century mortality for all babies. Meckel, Save the Babies, 1. As Richard Meckel explains, both poor record keeping and few surviving records preclude precise estimates of infant death in the nineteenth century. Demographers nevertheless agree that 15 to 20 percent of babies died during their first year in most areas in the United States, while in some large cities and in some southern locales up to 30 percent of infants died. For more precise estimates of nineteenth-century infant mortality, particularly according to social and economic differences, see Samuel H. Preston and Michael R. Haines, Fatal Years: Child Mortality in Late Nineteenth-Century Americ a (Princeton, NJ, 1991), 49-136.
54. J. Lewis Smith, "Recent Improvements in Infant Feeding," Transactions of the American Pediatric Society 1 (1889): 87. In 1885 the
55. J. Lewis Smith, "Recent Improvements in Infant Feeding," Transactions of the American Pediatric Society 1 (1889): 87. In 1885 the charities that cared for orphaned babies in New York City reported that between 1881 and 1885, 27 percent of the foundlings breast-fed by wet nurses died. But when caretakers fed foundlings artificially, 70 percent died during their first year and 90 percent died before their second birthday. Jerome Walker, "Is Nursing by the Mother to be Encouraged?" Archives of Pediatrics 2 (January 1885): 2. Although it is difficult to assess the "normal" death rate of infants during this era, the death rate of New York's wet-nursed orphans fell within the 15 to 30 percent range that demographers now estimate was the mid-nineteenth century mortality for all babies. Meckel, Save the Babies, 1. As Richard Meckel explains, both poor record keeping and few surviving records preclude precise estimates of infant death in the nineteenth century. Demographers nevertheless agree that 15 to 20 percent of babies died during their first year in most areas in the United States, while in some large cities and in some southern locales up to 30 percent of infants died. For more precise estimates of nineteenth-century infant mortality, particularly according to social and economic differences, see Samuel H. Preston and Michael R. Haines, Fatal Years: Child Mortality in Late Nineteenth-Century Americ a (Princeton, NJ, 1991), 49-136.
56. "Fourth Annual Report of the Chicago Foundlings' Home," The Chicago Foundlings Record 5 (February 1875): 13-14, Chicago Historical Society; "God's Dealings with the Foundlings," Faith's Record 9 (October 1879): 82, Chicago Historical Society; "Twelfth Annual Report," Faith's Record 12 (February 1883): 12, Chicago Historical Society.
57. "Fourth Annual Report of the Chicago Foundlings' Home," The Chicago Foundlings Record 5 (February 1875): 13-14, Chicago Historical Society; "God's Dealings with the Foundlings," Faith's Record 9 (October 1879): 82, Chicago Historical Society; "Twelfth Annual Report," Faith's Record 12 (February 1883): 12, Chicago Historical Society.
58. "Fourth Annual Report of the Chicago Foundlings' Home," The Chicago Foundlings Record 5 (February 1875): 13-14, Chicago Historical Society; "God's Dealings with the Foundlings," Faith's Record 9 (October 1879): 82, Chicago Historical Society; "Twelfth Annual Report," Faith's Record 12 (February 1883): 12, Chicago Historical Society.
59. "Fourth Annual Report," (February 1875): 14-15.
60. "God's Dealings" (October 1879): 82.
61. "God's Dealings With the Foundlings," Faith's Record 12 (July 1882): 51, Chicago Historical Society.
62. "God's Dealings with the Foundlings," Faith's Record 12 (August 1883): 58, Chicago Historical Society.
63. Of the estimated 38,764 babies born in Chicago in 1897, for example, 15 percent died before their first birthday. Of the dead, 54 percent died of diarrhea. Doctors blamed the crisis on mothers who fed their babies something other than human milk, usually cow's milk. Wolf, " 'Don't Kill Your Baby,' " 219-222. Infant deaths from diarrhea did not begin to wane appreciably in Chicago until 1920 and remained a significant cause of infant death until the late 1930s. Wolf, "Discarding Nature's Plan," 16-17.
64. Of the estimated 38,764 babies born in Chicago in 1897, for example, 15 percent died before their first birthday. Of the dead, 54 percent died of diarrhea. Doctors blamed the crisis on mothers who fed their babies something other than human milk, usually cow's milk. Wolf, " 'Don't Kill Your Baby,' " 219-222. Infant deaths from diarrhea did not begin to wane appreciably in Chicago until 1920 and remained a significant cause of infant death until the late 1930s. Wolf, "Discarding Nature's Plan," 16-17.
65. "Nursery Problems," Babyhood, 2 (June 1886): 245-246.
66. Department of Health City of Chicago, "Feeding of the Baby During the First Month," Bulletin Chicago School of Sanitary Instruction 4 (4 June 1910): 2.
67. U. S. Children's Bureau, Infant Care, 59-60.
68. Fritz B. Talbot, "The Wet-Nurse Problem," National Conference on Infant Mortality Report of the Proceedings (1913): 324.
69. Abt, Baby Doctor, 94-95.
70. Handwritten notes entitled "Dr. Jaggard" and "Dr. Geisler" 1890, Anita McCormick Blaine Papers, McC Mss 2E Box 9, Folder n. d. 1890, Manuscripts Library, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin.
71. Arthur W. Meigs, "The Artificial Feeding of Infants," Transactions of the American Pediatric Society 1 (1889): 81.
72. Smith, "Recent Improvements," 88-89.
73. Frank Spooner Churchill, "Infant Feeding," The Chicago Medical Recorder 10 (February 1896): 109.
74. Nathan Allen, "Laws of Maternity," Babyhood 5 (March 1889): 112-113.
75. Frank Richardson, "Breast Feeding," Everybody's Baby, 1 (May 1928): 12, Health Fraud and Alternative Medicine Collection, Box 244, Folder 0244-14, American Medical Association Archives, Chicago, Illinois.
76. Julius H. Hess, Feeding and Nutritional Disorders in Infancy and Childhood (Philadelphia, 1928), 46.
77. Thompson S. Westcott, "Modified Wet Nursing," Archives of Pediatrics 24 (March 1907): 198. A physician made this comment during a discussion following the presentation of Westcott's article. Worry over "unsuitable" wet nurses was also due to the widespread notion that a wet nurse's personality and appearance could be transmitted to her young charge through her milk. See for example, "The Influence of the Milk of Wet-Nurses," Babyhood 3 (October 1887): 372 which tries to convince mothers of the absurdity of this belief. The origin of this conviction is, according to Leonell C. Strong, "lost in ancient times." See Leonell C. Strong, "Mother's Milk and the Offspring," Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 8 (1953): 210-214.
78. Thompson S. Westcott, "Modified Wet Nursing," Archives of Pediatrics 24 (March 1907): 198. A physician made this comment during a discussion following the presentation of Westcott's article. Worry over "unsuitable" wet nurses was also due to the widespread notion that a wet nurse's personality and appearance could be transmitted to her young charge through her milk. See for example, "The Influence of the Milk of Wet-Nurses," Babyhood 3 (October 1887): 372 which tries to convince mothers of the absurdity of this belief. The origin of this conviction is, according to Leonell C. Strong, "lost in ancient times." See Leonell C. Strong, "Mother's Milk and the Offspring," Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 8 (1953): 210-214.
79. Thompson S. Westcott, "Modified Wet Nursing," Archives of Pediatrics 24 (March 1907): 198. A physician made this comment during a discussion following the presentation of Westcott's article. Worry over "unsuitable" wet nurses was also due to the widespread notion that a wet nurse's personality and appearance could be transmitted to her young charge through her milk. See for example, "The Influence of the Milk of Wet-Nurses," Babyhood 3 (October 1887): 372 which tries to convince mothers of the absurdity of this belief. The origin of this conviction is, according to Leonell C. Strong, "lost in ancient times." See Leonell C. Strong, "Mother's Milk and the Offspring," Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 8 (1953): 210-214.
80. Clifford G. Grulee, Infant Feeding (Philadelphia and London, 1914), 94-95.
81. Hess, Feeding and Nutritional Disorders, 49.
82. "News Items," The Chicago Medical Recorder 17 (October 1899): 265.
83. Hess, Feeding and Nutritional Disorders, 49.
84. C. Cleveland, "Some Observations Upon the Feeding of Infants," Archives of Pediatrics 1 (June 1884): 389.
85. Thompson S. Westcott, "Modified Wet Nursing," Transactions of the American Pediatric Society 18 (1906): 16.
86. Fanny B. Workman, "The Wet-Nurse in the Household," Babyhood 2 (March 1886): 142.
87. For more on mothers and wet nurses and the nursery as their "contested terrain" see Janet Golden, "Trouble in the Nursery: Physicians, Families, and Wet Nurses at the End of the Nineteenth Century," in Carol Groneman and Mary Beth Norton, eds., "To Toil the Livelong Day" America's Women at Work, 1780-1980 (Ithaca, NY, 1987), 125-137. See also Golden, A Social History of Wet Nursing, 156-178.
88. For more on mothers and wet nurses and the nursery as their "contested terrain" see Janet Golden, "Trouble in the Nursery: Physicians, Families, and Wet Nurses at the End of the Nineteenth Century," in Carol Groneman and Mary Beth Norton, eds., "To Toil the Livelong Day" America's Women at Work, 1780-1980 (Ithaca, NY, 1987), 125-137. See also Golden, A Social History of Wet Nursing, 156-178.
89. "The Influence of the Milk of Wet-Nurses," Babyhood 3 (October 1887): 372.
90. According to Janet Golden, Fanny Bullock Workman, a Massachusetts mother, was quite well-to-do - she was the wife of a physician and the daughter of a former Massachusetts governor - when she wrote the letter to Babyhood. She eventually became an author and explorer, setting world records in mountain climbing. Golden, A Social History of Wet Nursing, 159-160.
91. Workman, "Wet-Nurse in the Household," 142-143.
92. Ibid., 143.
93. Mellin's Food, invented by London chemist Gustav Mellin in 1866, was a "soluble, dry extract of wheat, malted barley and bicarbonate of potassium ... converted into soluble carbohydrates, maltose and dextrins, and by evaporation reduced to a dry powder consisting of maltose, dextrins, proteins and salts" to be mixed with a prescribed amount of milk. Mellin Food Company, "Historical," 1914 pamphlet, Box 393, Folder 0393-03, AMA Health Fraud and Alternative Medicine Collection.
94. Workman, "Wet-Nurse in the Household," 144.
95. "Nursery Problems," Babyhood 2 (June 1886): 245.
96. "A Defence of Wet-Nurses," Babyhood 3 (September 1887): 352.
97. The Chicago Daily Tribune, 25 January 1885, 20.
98. Talbot, "The Wet-Nurse Problem," 325.
99. For more on the high death rate among wet nurses' infants see Golden, A Social History of Wet Nursing, 97-98; 121-127. Also see Golden, "Trouble in the Nursery," 135.
100. For more on the high death rate among wet nurses' infants see Golden, A Social History of Wet Nursing, 97-98; 121-127. Also see Golden, "Trouble in the Nursery," 135.
101. Hess, Feeding and Nutritional Disorders, 51.
102. U.S. Children's Bureau, Infant Care, 59.
103. Grulee, Infant Feeding, 95.
104. Winters, "The Relative Influences," 511, 513.
105. " 'Six Months Law' Has Good Results," Hygeia 3 (July 1925): 413.
106. Cleveland, "Some Observations," 389.
107. Grulee, Infant Feeding, 95.
108. Westcott, "Modified Wet Nursing," (March 1907): 198. A doctor made this suggestion during a discussion following the presentation of Westcott's article.
109. J. Ross Snyder, "The Breast Milk Problem," Journal of the American Medical Association 51 (10 October 1908): 1214.
110. Francis P. Denny, "Human Milk in the Treatment of Various Infections," Boston Medical and Surgical Journal 160 (11 February 1909): 162-163.
111. Janet Golden argues that by the early twentieth century, as the use of wet nurses declined, women and doctors began viewing human milk as a commodity "identified by its value to those who received it rather than by the character of its producers." Golden, A Social History of Wet Nursing, 179.
112. B. Raymond Hoobler, "Problems Connected with the Collection and Production of Human Milk," Journal of the American Medical Association 69 (11 August 1917): 421.
113. "Annual Report of the Infant Welfare Society of Chicago for the Year Ending December 31st, 1911," p. 11, Infant Welfare Society Papers, Box 2, Folder 2, Chicago Historical Society.
114. "News Items," The Chicago Medical Recorder 27 (December 1905): 871.
115. Edna L. Foley, Visiting Nurse Manual (The Visiting Nurse Association of Chicago, 1914), 42.
116. Chicago Pediatric Society Proceedings, 19 November 1907, Special Collections, Regenstein Library, The University of Chicago.
117. Ibid., 17 December 1907.
118. Ibid., 20 October 1908.
119. Denny, "Value of Small Quantities," 1908-1909.
120. Clifford G. Grulee, "Infant Feeding at the Presbyterian Hospital," The Presbyterian Hospital Bulletin (April 1916): 9, Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center Archives, Chicago, Illinois.
121. Frank Churchill speaking in a discussion after the presentation of L. Emmett Holt, "A Ready Method of Calculating Milk Formulas of Various Percentages and the Caloric Value of the Same," Transactions of the American Pediatric Society 23 (1911): 281.
122. Isaac A. Abt, "The Technic of Wetnurse Management in Institutions," Journal of the American Medical Association 69 (11 August 1917): 418.
123. For more on Sarah Morris Children's Hospital, which Abt founded, see Abt, Baby Doctor, 134-153 and Sarah Gordon, ed., All Our Lives: A Centennial History of Michael Reese Hospital and Medical Center 1881-1981 (Chicago, 1981), 62-93.
124. "Abstract of Discussion on Papers of Drs. Sedgwick, Abt and Hoobler," Journal of the American Medical Association 69 (11 August 1917): 427.
125. Abt, "Technic of Wetnurse Management," 418-420.
126. Ibid., 419.
127. I. A. Abt, "Observations on the Electric Breast Pump," Alumni Bulletin The Chicago Lying-in Hospital and Dispensary (February 1926): 5, 7-8.
128. F. S. Churchill, "The Wet Nurse in Hospital Practice," American Journal of Obstetrics and Diseases of Women and Children 70 (1914): 499. Only three years earlier Churchill claimed that wet nurses at Children's Memorial Hospital never directly breastfed hospitalized infants, rather they pumped their milk to prevent being infected by a sick baby. See the discussion following Holt, "Ready Method," 281. From what Churchill writes in this 1914 article, however, the policy must have been dropped. Traditionally doctors had been concerned, not that a wet nurse would transmit disease to a baby, but that a baby might transmit disease, particularly syphilis, to a wet nurse. In a series of eighteenthcentury experiments in a Parisian hospital, syphilitic wet nurses given mercury by medical personnel breastfed babies with congenital syphilis in the hope that the mercury would be passed via the breast milk to the sick baby and cure the infant of the disease. During the course of the experiments, doctors observed that syphilis was easily transmitted from baby to wet nurse (many of the women who lived at the hospital had acquired syphilis in this manner) but very rarely from wet nurse to baby. Joan Sherwood, "Treating Syphilis: The Wetnurse as Technology in an Eighteenth-Century Parisian Hospital," Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 50 (July 1995): 315-339.
129. F. S. Churchill, "The Wet Nurse in Hospital Practice," American Journal of Obstetrics and Diseases of Women and Children 70 (1914): 499. Only three years earlier Churchill claimed that wet nurses at Children's Memorial Hospital never directly breastfed hospitalized infants, rather they pumped their milk to prevent being infected by a sick baby. See the discussion following Holt, "Ready Method," 281. From what Churchill writes in this 1914 article, however, the policy must have been dropped. Traditionally doctors had been concerned, not that a wet nurse would transmit disease to a baby, but that a baby might transmit disease, particularly syphilis, to a wet nurse. In a series of eighteenthcentury experiments in a Parisian hospital, syphilitic wet nurses given mercury by medical personnel breastfed babies with congenital syphilis in the hope that the mercury would be passed via the breast milk to the sick baby and cure the infant of the disease. During the course of the experiments, doctors observed that syphilis was easily transmitted from baby to wet nurse (many of the women who lived at the hospital had acquired syphilis in this manner) but very rarely from wet nurse to baby. Joan Sherwood, "Treating Syphilis: The Wetnurse as Technology in an Eighteenth-Century Parisian Hospital," Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 50 (July 1995): 315-339.
130. Frank Churchill speaking in a discussion after the presentation of Holt, "A Ready Method," 281.
131. "Social Service," Presbyterian Hospital Bulletin (April 1914): 7-9, Rush-PresbyterianSt. Luke's Medical Center Archives, Chicago, Illinois.
132. Ibid.; Grulee, "Infant Feeding at the Presbyterian Hospital," 10.
133. Ibid.; Grulee, "Infant Feeding at the Presbyterian Hospital," 10.
134. "Social Service," (April 1914): 7-9.
135. "Social Service Report - (October 1916," The Presbyterian Hospital Bulletin (October 1916): 22, Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center Archives, Chicago, Illinois.
136. "Unified Report of the Woman's Auxiliary Board of the Presbyterian Hospital of Chicago for 1917," The Presbyterian Hospital Bulletin (January 1918): 27, Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center Archives, Chicago, Illinois.
137. Grulee, "Infant Feeding at the Presbyterian Hospital," 9.
138. Mrs. Perkins B. Bass, "Unified Annual Report," The Presbyterian Hospital Bulletin (January 1928): 8, Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center Archives, Chicago, Illinois.
139. Julius H. Hess, "Uniform for the Wet Nurse," The Modem Hospital 7 (September 1916): 265.
140. Grulee, "Infant Feeding at the Presbyterian Hospital," 11.
141. Joseph B. DeLee, "Motherhood An Address before the Women's Society of Isaiah Temple," 4 January 1898, Joseph B. DeLee, M.D. Papers, Folder 17, Box 9, Northwestern Memorial Hospital Archives, Chicago, Illinois.
142. Abt, Baby Doctor, 147.
143. Ibid.
144. Abt, "Technic of Wetnurse Management," 419.
145. This did not happen at Sarah Morris, however, because doctors there found, contrary to popular belief, that menstruation had little, if any, effect on milk quality. Ibid., 420.
146. Ibid.
147. M. Rohtge, "Report from the Children's Ward," (July 1914): 11; Elizabeth Douglas, "Quarterly Report of the Social Service Department," (October 1914): 13; "Social Service Report," (July 1915): 6; "Social Service Report," (October 1915): 12; "Social Service Report," (January 1916): 9; "Quarterly Report-Social Service Work April-July," (July 1916): 21. All reports are from issues of The Presbyterian Hospital Bulletin, Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center Archives, Chicago, Illinois. Doctors eventually reversed their conviction that human milk was doomed to deteriorate in quality over time. As early as 1915 Luther Holt and others reported that the milk produced by a mother whose baby was 10 to 20 months old did not differ substantially from the milk produced by a mother whose baby was 1 to 9 months old.
148. M. Rohtge, "Report from the Children's Ward," (July 1914): 11; Elizabeth Douglas, "Quarterly Report of the Social Service Department," (October 1914): 13; "Social Service Report," (July 1915): 6; "Social Service Report," (October 1915): 12; "Social Service Report," (January 1916): 9; "Quarterly Report-Social Service Work April-July," (July 1916): 21. All reports are from issues of The Presbyterian Hospital Bulletin, Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center Archives, Chicago, Illinois. Doctors eventually reversed their conviction that human milk was doomed to deteriorate in quality over time. As early as 1915 Luther Holt and others reported that the milk produced by a mother whose baby was 10 to 20 months old did not differ substantially from the milk produced by a mother whose baby was 1 to 9 months old.
149. M. Rohtge, "Report from the Children's Ward," (July 1914): 11; Elizabeth Douglas, "Quarterly Report of the Social Service Department," (October 1914): 13; "Social Service Report," (July 1915): 6; "Social Service Report," (October 1915): 12; "Social Service Report," (January 1916): 9; "Quarterly Report-Social Service Work April-July," (July 1916): 21. All reports are from issues of The Presbyterian Hospital Bulletin, Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center Archives, Chicago, Illinois. Doctors eventually reversed their conviction that human milk was doomed to deteriorate in quality over time. As early as 1915 Luther Holt and others reported that the milk produced by a mother whose baby was 10 to 20 months old did not differ substantially from the milk produced by a mother whose baby was 1 to 9 months old.
150. M. Rohtge, "Report from the Children's Ward," (July 1914): 11; Elizabeth Douglas, "Quarterly Report of the Social Service Department," (October 1914): 13; "Social Service Report," (July 1915): 6; "Social Service Report," (October 1915): 12; "Social Service Report," (January 1916): 9; "Quarterly Report-Social Service Work April-July," (July 1916): 21. All reports are from issues of The Presbyterian Hospital Bulletin, Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center Archives, Chicago, Illinois. Doctors eventually reversed their conviction that human milk was doomed to deteriorate in quality over time. As early as 1915 Luther Holt and others reported that the milk produced by a mother whose baby was 10 to 20 months old did not differ substantially from the milk produced by a mother whose baby was 1 to 9 months old.
151. M. Rohtge, "Report from the Children's Ward," (July 1914): 11; Elizabeth Douglas, "Quarterly Report of the Social Service Department," (October 1914): 13; "Social Service Report," (July 1915): 6; "Social Service Report," (October 1915): 12; "Social Service Report," (January 1916): 9; "Quarterly Report-Social Service Work April-July," (July 1916): 21. All reports are from issues of The Presbyterian Hospital Bulletin, Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center Archives, Chicago, Illinois. Doctors eventually reversed their conviction that human milk was doomed to deteriorate in quality over time. As early as 1915 Luther Holt and others reported that the milk produced by a mother whose baby was 10 to 20 months old did not differ substantially from the milk produced by a mother whose baby was 1 to 9 months old.
152. M. Rohtge, "Report from the Children's Ward," (July 1914): 11; Elizabeth Douglas, "Quarterly Report of the Social Service Department," (October 1914): 13; "Social Service Report," (July 1915): 6; "Social Service Report," (October 1915): 12; "Social Service Report," (January 1916): 9; "Quarterly Report-Social Service Work April-July," (July 1916): 21. All reports are from issues of The Presbyterian Hospital Bulletin, Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center Archives, Chicago, Illinois. Doctors eventually reversed their conviction that human milk was doomed to deteriorate in quality over time. As early as 1915 Luther Holt and others reported that the milk produced by a mother whose baby was 10 to 20 months old did not differ substantially from the milk produced by a mother whose baby was 1 to 9 months old.
153. M. Rohtge, "Report from the Children's Ward," (July 1914): 11; Elizabeth Douglas, "Quarterly Report of the Social Service Department," (October 1914): 13; "Social Service Report," (July 1915): 6; "Social Service Report," (October 1915): 12; "Social Service Report," (January 1916): 9; "Quarterly Report-Social Service Work April-July," (July 1916): 21. All reports are from issues of The Presbyterian Hospital Bulletin, Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center Archives, Chicago, Illinois. Doctors eventually reversed their conviction that human milk was doomed to deteriorate in quality over time. As early as 1915 Luther Holt and others reported that the milk produced by a mother whose baby was 10 to 20 months old did not differ substantially from the milk produced by a mother whose baby was 1 to 9 months old.
154. L. Emmett Holt, Angelia M. Courtney and Helen L. Fales, "A Chemical Study of Woman's Milk, Especially Its Inorganic Constituents," American Journal of Diseases of Children 10 (October 1915): 2380.
155. In 1917 Fritz Talbot concurred with Holt, pointing out that women in Japan and other countries routinely nursed their babies for 3 to 4 years with no ill effect. "Abstract of Discussion on Papers of Drs. Sedgwick, Abt and Hoobler," 425. Nevertheless, it was still many years before this theory was generally accepted.
156. "Social Service Report," (January 1916): 9. Inexplicably, this wet nurse "placed out" her baby when he was two months old in order to work at the hospital. Her three older children went to relatives.
157. "Quarterly Report - Social Service Work April-July," The Presbyterian Hospital Bulletin (July 1916): 21, Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center Archives, Chicago, Illinois.
158. "Social Service Report April-June," (July 1917): 15.
159. James A. Tobey, "A New Foster-Mother," Hygeia (November 1929): 1110.
160. B. Raymond Hoobler, "The Production, Collection and Distribution of Human Milk: Retrospect and Prospect," Journal of the American Medical Association 88 (4 June 1927): 1786.
161. Ibid., 1787. Prior to the 1920s women who could afford to do so usually summoned a physician or midwife to their home to attend a birth. Generally, only poor women gave birth in the hospital and, this doctor implies, these women were eager to alleviate their poverty by wet nursing or selling their milk to be bottled. Hospital births were mainstreamed more rapidly in Chicago than in other locales, however. By 1926, 55.1 percent of mothers in Chicago gave birth in hospitals. By 1930, 68 percent did. "Births in Hospitals Increase," Report of the Department of Health of the City of Chicago for the Years 1926 to 1930 (Chicago: 1931), 243. In the United States as a whole more than half of all births did not take place in hospitals until 1940. See Neal Devitt, "The Transition from Home to Hospital Birth in the United States, 1930-1960," Birth and the Family Journal (1977): 56. For more on the history of childbirth in the United States see Judith Walzer Leavitt, Brought to Bed: Childbearing in America, 1750-1950 (New York, 1986).
162. Ibid., 1787. Prior to the 1920s women who could afford to do so usually summoned a physician or midwife to their home to attend a birth. Generally, only poor women gave birth in the hospital and, this doctor implies, these women were eager to alleviate their poverty by wet nursing or selling their milk to be bottled. Hospital births were mainstreamed more rapidly in Chicago than in other locales, however. By 1926, 55.1 percent of mothers in Chicago gave birth in hospitals. By 1930, 68 percent did. "Births in Hospitals Increase," Report of the Department of Health of the City of Chicago for the Years 1926 to 1930 (Chicago: 1931), 243. In the United States as a whole more than half of all births did not take place in hospitals until 1940. See Neal Devitt, "The Transition from Home to Hospital Birth in the United States, 1930-1960," Birth and the Family Journal (1977): 56. For more on the history of childbirth in the United States see Judith Walzer Leavitt, Brought to Bed: Childbearing in America, 1750-1950 (New York, 1986).
163. Ibid., 1787. Prior to the 1920s women who could afford to do so usually summoned a physician or midwife to their home to attend a birth. Generally, only poor women gave birth in the hospital and, this doctor implies, these women were eager to alleviate their poverty by wet nursing or selling their milk to be bottled. Hospital births were mainstreamed more rapidly in Chicago than in other locales, however. By 1926, 55.1 percent of mothers in Chicago gave birth in hospitals. By 1930, 68 percent did. "Births in Hospitals Increase," Report of the Department of Health of the City of Chicago for the Years 1926 to 1930 (Chicago: 1931), 243. In the United States as a whole more than half of all births did not take place in hospitals until 1940. See Neal Devitt, "The Transition from Home to Hospital Birth in the United States, 1930-1960," Birth and the Family Journal (1977): 56. For more on the history of childbirth in the United States see Judith Walzer Leavitt, Brought to Bed: Childbearing in America, 1750-1950 (New York, 1986).
164. Ibid., 1787. Prior to the 1920s women who could afford to do so usually summoned a physician or midwife to their home to attend a birth. Generally, only poor women gave birth in the hospital and, this doctor implies, these women were eager to alleviate their poverty by wet nursing or selling their milk to be bottled. Hospital births were mainstreamed more rapidly in Chicago than in other locales, however. By 1926, 55.1 percent of mothers in Chicago gave birth in hospitals. By 1930, 68 percent did. "Births in Hospitals Increase," Report of the Department of Health of the City of Chicago for the Years 1926 to 1930 (Chicago: 1931), 243. In the United States as a whole more than half of all births did not take place in hospitals until 1940. See Neal Devitt, "The Transition from Home to Hospital Birth in the United States, 1930-1960," Birth and the Family Journal (1977): 56. For more on the history of childbirth in the United States see Judith Walzer Leavitt, Brought to Bed: Childbearing in America, 1750-1950 (New York, 1986).
165. Hoobler, "Production, Collection and Distribution of Human Milk," 1787.
166. Chicago Board of Health, "Regulations for the Conduct of Maternity Hospitals, Maternity Divisions of General Hospitals, and Nurseries for the Newborn," undated but written between 1931 and 1938 as part of the "Revised Code of 1931," p. 32, Municipal Reference Collection, Harold Washington Library, Chicago, Illinois; City of Chicago Employment History for Gertrude Plotzke (Plotzke opened the Mothers' Breast Milk Station at the behest of Chicago Health Commissioner Herman Bundesen and remained its supervisor until 1948 when she became superintendent of the nurses at both the Breast Milk Station and the Health Department's infant welfare stations); Health Department City of Chicago, "Mothers' Breast Milk Station," Report of the Board of Health for the Year 1940, 15.
167. Chicago Board of Health, "Regulations for the Conduct of Maternity Hospitals, Maternity Divisions of General Hospitals, and Nurseries for the Newborn," undated but written between 1931 and 1938 as part of the "Revised Code of 1931," p. 32, Municipal Reference Collection, Harold Washington Library, Chicago, Illinois; City of Chicago Employment History for Gertrude Plotzke (Plotzke opened the Mothers' Breast Milk Station at the behest of Chicago Health Commissioner Herman Bundesen and remained its supervisor until 1948 when she became superintendent of the nurses at both the Breast Milk Station and the Health Department's infant welfare stations); Health Department City of Chicago, "Mothers' Breast Milk Station," Report of the Board of Health for the Year 1940, 15.
168. Health Department City of Chicago, "Mothers' Breast Milk Station," 15.
169. Mrs. Gertrude Rosenberger (nee Plotzke), interview by author, tape recording, Chicago, Illinois, 10 December 1996.
170. Mrs. Josephine Zuzak Sobolewski, interview by author, tape recording, Chicago, Illinois, 28 April 1997. Sobolewski became the Breast Milk Station's supervisor after Plotzke was promoted to superintendent.
171. Golden, A Social History of Wet Nursing, 179-201.
172. Hoobler, "Production, Collection and Distribution of Human Milk," 1787.
173. Tobey, "A New Foster-Mother," 1110.
174. Hoobler, "The Production, Collection and Distribution of Human Milk," 1788.
175. Interestingly, there is no record of anyone in Chicago ever broaching the issue of a milk donor's race. The Chicago Board of Health Mothers' Breast Milk Station was located in an African-American neighborhood and virtually all the mothers who provided the Station with milk were black. Sobolewski interview.
176. Golden, A Social History of Wet Nursing.
177. This was part of a more general worry among doctors and women that all mothers had the potential to produce milk either quantitatively or qualitatively inadequate for their babies' needs. Doctors feared this was an unavoidable trend caused by "overcivilization," "overeducation," "race degeneracy," and/or human evolution. See Wolf, " 'Don't Kill Your Baby,' " 242; Wolf, "Discarding Nature's Plan," 26-38; Apple, Mothers & Medicine, 6-7; and Harvey Levenstein, " 'Best for Babies' or 'Preventable Infanticide'? The Controversy over Artificial Feeding of Infants in America, 1880-1920," The Journal of American History 70 (June 1983): 88-89.
178. This was part of a more general worry among doctors and women that all mothers had the potential to produce milk either quantitatively or qualitatively inadequate for their babies' needs. Doctors feared this was an unavoidable trend caused by "overcivilization," "overeducation," "race degeneracy," and/or human evolution. See Wolf, " 'Don't Kill Your Baby,' " 242; Wolf, "Discarding Nature's Plan," 26-38; Apple, Mothers & Medicine, 6-7; and Harvey Levenstein, " 'Best for Babies' or 'Preventable Infanticide'? The Controversy over Artificial Feeding of Infants in America, 1880-1920," The Journal of American History 70 (June 1983): 88-89.
179. This was part of a more general worry among doctors and women that all mothers had the potential to produce milk either quantitatively or qualitatively inadequate for their babies' needs. Doctors feared this was an unavoidable trend caused by "overcivilization," "overeducation," "race degeneracy," and/or human evolution. See Wolf, " 'Don't Kill Your Baby,' " 242; Wolf, "Discarding Nature's Plan," 26-38; Apple, Mothers & Medicine, 6-7; and Harvey Levenstein, " 'Best for Babies' or 'Preventable Infanticide'? The Controversy over Artificial Feeding of Infants in America, 1880-1920," The Journal of American History 70 (June 1983): 88-89.
180. This was part of a more general worry among doctors and women that all mothers had the potential to produce milk either quantitatively or qualitatively inadequate for their babies' needs. Doctors feared this was an unavoidable trend caused by "overcivilization," "overeducation," "race degeneracy," and/or human evolution. See Wolf, " 'Don't Kill Your Baby,' " 242; Wolf, "Discarding Nature's Plan," 26-38; Apple, Mothers & Medicine, 6-7; and Harvey Levenstein, " 'Best for Babies' or 'Preventable Infanticide'? The Controversy over Artificial Feeding of Infants in America, 1880-1920," The Journal of American History 70 (June 1983): 88-89.