A SHORT PICTORIAL REVIEW OF THE EVOLUTION OF INFANT-FEEDING VESSELS UP TO THE BEGINNING OF THE 19TH CENTURY

摘要

THE basic problems of infant feeding have remained the same through the ages. One might think that civilized life had made our mothers less fit to supply adequate nourishment for their babies, but we know that the problem of insufficient milk-supply is being faced by primitive tribes today, and was faced by the most ancient nations, among whom lactagogues enjoyed a rather prominent place in the pharmacopeia. Maternal mortality was much higher in former times, and thus infants were frequently left without their mothers and their milk-supply. It is true that wet-nurses were often used to supply the lacking mother's milk, but even they were not always available wvhen needed. Feeding directly from animals was practiced off and on throughout history, but this is no easy matter, particularly in the case of very young infants. Thus it was only natural that utensils should have been devised to make it easy even for untrained women to supply these infants w-ith the needed food.