Bookmark Babies

by

Lauren Roberts

No woman fit to have a child is not fit to nurse it.
     Nineteenth century refrain

People of all times and in all places have been feeding babies. But when and how they did it was a function of culture, class, cuisine, and economic status. Artificial feeding (feeding infants other than by mother’s milk) is not a recent development. Wooden feeding bottles have been discovered at archaeological sites in the Nile Delta, and references to such feeding can be found in the New Testament. Apparently it was also common in ancient Rome. But through most of human history mothers breastfed their babies unless they were incapable of doing so or if they were of a certain status in a society that allowed mothers to “hire out” the job to wet nurses. The latter was far more common in Europe where class divisions were clearly laid out, but less so in the developing United States where most mothers in the colonies breastfed their infants. It was simply impractical in most cases because the frontier character of colonial settlement and the paucity of wet nurses.

But even where popular, wet nursing, the practice of using an already nursing woman to nurse another baby, began to decline due to several factors—fears that nurses transmitted moral as well as physical characteristics in their milk, the disruptive effect of wet nurses who while of the servant class considered themselves above the other servants, a decrease in the number of wet nurses who were working outside the home.

In the nineteenth century, milk was believed to be the exclusive food intended for infants until teething indicated a readiness for solid foods. It began with animal milk—goats, cows, mares, and donkeys, though cow’s milk because of its appearance to human milk, began to be favored. But it was not without problems. Observers noted that those fed unaltered cow’s milk had far more indigestion and dehydration experiences than did infants who had been breastfed. Infant mortality was high, and even though the connections of germs in cow’s milk with disease had not yet been discovered it was regarded as a baby-killer by many. In the second half of the century, work was underway to alter the chemical composition of cow’s milk to be more like human milk. Among the ways tried were the addition of sugar or other sweeteners. But by the 1860s, a growing number of physicians and scientists realized a market for infant foods was waiting to be exploited.

Then in 1860 Julius van Liebig, a German analytical chemist who was one of the prime movers to establish chemistry as a discipline, developed the first commercial baby food—a powered formula made from wheat flour, cow’s milk, malt flour, and potassium bicarbonate—Liebig’s Soluble Food for Babies, in 1867 to European markets. A year later it was being manufactured and sold in London by the Liebig’s Registered Concentrated Milk Company, and in 1869 had made its way to America where it was sold for one dollar a bottle in 1869 as Soluble Infant Food.

Liebig did not argue against the notion of mother’s milk being the perfect food. Rather, he clamed that he had created a substitute that was virtually identical to it. Its popularity ensured that a host of imitators would arise, and among them was Mellin’s Food, a powder to be added to milk that had been developed in England by G. Mellin and was manufactured in Boston.

All the manufacturers of infant foods, but especially Mellin’s Foods, used basically the same marketing techniques Pictures of healthy babies and testimonials by happy mothers filled the advertisements. A typical example is this letter purportedly written by Ellis Stanyon: “I am sending you a photo of my daughter, Elsie, who is 14 months old. At the age of 3 months, she was a weak, sickly child, and her life was despaired of. Your Food was recommended, and we gave it to her, and she took it immediately, with great relish. The effect was truly magical, and I am thankful to say she has not had a day’s illness since the time we first gave her Mellin’s food, for which I feel greatly indebted to you.”

In an interesting side note, one of those babies pictured in the ads was the future actor,  Humphrey Bogart. His mother Maud Humphrey was a commercial illustrator who had studied with, among others, James McNeill Whistler. She later became the artistic director of the fashion magazine, The Delineator, but she was also a militant suffragette. And her drawing of her baby Humphrey appeared in a national advertising campaign for Mellin’s Baby Food, not Gerber’s as is often reported.

But one of the most common promotional technique was to offer free samples by mail to the readers of middle-class magazines. The most effective, though, were the free handbooks on infant care and feeding that were distributed by the company. Mellin’s had its own press, enabling it to produce and distribute these handbooks, which, as Harvey Levenstein put it in Revolution at the Table: The Transformation of the American Diet, “explained the chemistry of milk and feeding in clear but relatively sophisticated language, adding an aura of science to the food they were promoting. Not only did they prove effective in convincing mothers of the efficacy of proprietary infant foods, they convinced many doctors as well. . . . Thus, by the 1890s a number of sources spread the growing impression that artificial feeding was both scientific and modern.”

Mellin’s didn’t hesitate to use guilt as a promotion tool either. In a display ad run in the Boston Daily Globe on April 11, 1880, it noted:

The Duty of Every Mother and especially those who are charged with the delicate and great responsibility of rearing hand-fed children, is to investigate the merits of the best artificial food for the preservation of infant life. The universal testimony of our most skillful physicians, and of thousands of mothers who have practically tested it, demonstrated beyond a doubt that Mellin’s Food for Infants is the best, and contains exactly the ingredients necessary to insure the life and health of the little ones to develop them in body and mind, and secure robust health in childhood, manhood and womanhood.

The exhibits of Mellin’s food in the Mechanics and Instituted exhibitions now in progress have attracted the attention of thousands of visitors, and the people are beginning to examine and discuss the suggestive topic which the displays suggest. Time and experience have put this food to a successful test, and its important bearing upon the rising and future generations cannot be overestimated. Its history proves again that it is almost invariably the case that a really good article is slow in making its way into the favor of the public, but, when finally its excellences are known, its success is assured and the rapidity of its introduction marvellous.
 
This is notably the case with the article which is known as Mellin’s food, and which is now being so generally received into public favor. For years it has been a deplorable but acknowledged fact, that an alarming percentage of children die before reaching the age of five years. In England, the number of children that die under one year old is in the ratio of one to every twelve births . . . Liebig's food, . . . came the nearest to a practical solution of the difficult problem, but it was unsuitable for distribution and exportation, and much trouble and sacrifice of time were entailed by its daily preparation. G. Mellin of London, following Liebig’s suggestions, produced an article which is portable, easy of preparation, and which gives entire satisfaction. Mellin’s food, requires neither boiling nor straining, that having already been done, but is almost instantly prepared for use by dissolving a certain quantity in hot water and then adding cold milk. Analysis of the food after mixing shows it to contain a large proportion of grape sugar, which enters so largely into the composition of mother’s milk, together with a large amount of protein and soluble phosphates, indicating flesh and bone forming nutrients of the highest type. . . . Thus science finally conquered all difficulties, and produced a food that all mothers will hail with delight. Not until 1874 did it make its appearance in this country, and then through the enterprises of Theodore Metcalf & Co., who, in response to the growing demand, obtained the North American agency. In order to supply the greatly increased demand in Europe and America for this food the proprietor was obliged to erect larger works, and since 1877 the food has been regularly supplied. . . . The best medical men in the country now acknowledge its merits and prescribe it in cases where formerly they were almost helpless.

Fixing formula for your infant will soon be quicker and easier than pouring a glass of milk for your preschooler. . . . If your pediatrician approves, you will be able to buy ready-to-serve formula at your grocery or drug store in disposable glass bottles, marked with ounces. . . . Only one mother in five now fixes the baby formula using the traditional evaporated milk mixed with carbohydrate modifiers, a mainstay of two-thirds of babies in 1952. Half of today's mothers now use a prepared infant formula, either a powder or liquid which is mixed with water, or the ready-serve formula poured from a can into sterilized bottles. The percentage has doubled in the last five years, was only 15 per cent in 1952. One baby in five, usually those past three or four months of age, gets whole cow's milk. Only one in 10 is breast fed, still the safest, most convenient and least expensive method of nourishing an infant. But even some breast-fed infants are occasionally given formula as a supplement, or when the mother must be away from home at feeding time.