Regency Health and Medicine: Breast Feeding

I recently found and am really enjoying this website collection and context for James Gillray’s work: https://www.james-gillray.org/ where I found this print and discussion. The image, The Fashionable Mamma, or the Convenience of Modern Dress (1796), pokes fun not only at the enormous feathers but also the empire waist that made it easy to indulge in the return to breastfeeding by the biological mother. In fact, a medicinal guide written by Reverend William Wilson in 1805 suggests “Feeding them with butter and sugar and cordials is very improper. They ought to be put to the breast.”

While for much of the 18th century, at least the first half, fashionable women relied on a wet nurse to breast feed, the 1763 Emile, or  On Education by Jean-Jacques Rousseau changed minds. In a blend of Enlightenment and Romanticism, Rosseau argued that natural suckling was foundational for children. This idea was heavily promoted by multiple clergymen.  Women’s magazines were more balanced, offering situations where a woman may not be able to breast feed: ”

The Lady’s Magazine: Or Entertaining Companion for the Fair Sex, Appropriated Solely to Their Use and Amusement. (1792). United Kingdom: Robinson and Roberts.

So while I have read many a historical romance where the heroine is Not Like Other Women in breast-feeding her children, in reality by the Regency it would have been an acceptable, fashionable practice.