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Wet nurse

A wet nurse is a woman who breastfeeds and cares for another's child.[1] Wet nurses are employed if the mother dies, or if she is unable or chooses not to nurse the child herself. Wet-nursed children may be known as "milk-siblings", and in some cultures, the families are linked by a special relationship of milk kinship. Wet-nursing existed in cultures around the world until the invention of reliable formula milk in the 20th century. The practice has made a small comeback in the 21st century.

Louis XIV as an infant with his nurse Longuet de la Giraudière

Reasons edit

A wet nurse can help when a mother is unable or unwilling to breastfeed her baby. Before the development of infant formula in the 20th century, wet-nursing could save a baby's life.

There are many reasons why a mother is unable to produce sufficient breast milk, or in some cases to lactate at all. For example, she may have a chronic or acute illness, and either the illness itself, or the treatment for it, reduces or stops her milk. This absence of lactation may be temporary or permanent.

There was a greater need for wet nurses when the rates of infant abandonment and maternal death, during and shortly after childbirth, were high.[2][3] There was a concurrent availability of lactating women whose own babies had died.[4]

Some women chose not to breastfeed for social reasons. For upper-class women, breastfeeding was considered unfashionable, in the sense that it not only prevented them from being able to wear the fashionable clothing of their time, but it was also thought to ruin their figures.[5] Working women faced other pressures to abandon breastfeeding, including from their husbands.[citation needed] Hiring a wet nurse was less expensive than having to hire someone else to help run the family business and/or take care of the family household duties in their place.[5] Some women chose to hire wet nurses purely to escape from the confining and time-consuming chore of breastfeeding.[6] Wet nurses have also been used when a mother cannot produce sufficient breast milk.

Eliciting milk edit

 
A 16th-century carving in a Belgian church, showing a woman expressing her milk into a bowl.

A woman can only act as a wet nurse if she is lactating (producing milk). It was once believed that a wet nurse must have recently undergone childbirth in order to lactate. This is not necessarily the case, as regular breast stimulation can elicit lactation via a neural reflex of prolactin production and secretion.[7] Some women have been able to establish lactation using a breast pump, in order to feed an infant.[8]

Gabrielle Palmer,[9] author of The Politics of Breastfeeding, states:

There is no medical reason why women should not lactate indefinitely or feed more than one child simultaneously (known as 'tandem feeding')...some women could theoretically be able to feed up to five babies.[10]

Historical and cultural practices edit

 
A Russian wet nurse, c. 1913

Wet nursing is an ancient practice, common to many cultures. It has been linked to social class, where monarchies, the aristocracy, nobility, or upper classes had their children wet-nursed for the benefit of the child's health, and sometimes in the hope of becoming pregnant again quickly. Exclusive breastfeeding inhibits ovulation in some women (lactational amenorrhea). Poor women, especially those who suffered the stigma of giving birth to an illegitimate child, sometimes had to give their baby up temporarily to a wet nurse, or permanently to another family.[11] The woman herself might in turn become wet nurse to a wealthier family, while using part of her wages to pay her own child's wet nurse. From Roman times and into the present day, philosophers and thinkers alike have held the view that the important emotional bond between mother and child is threatened by the presence of a wet nurse.[12]

In pre-modern times, it was incorrectly believed that wet nurses could pass on personality traits to infants, such as acquired characteristics.[13]

Mythology edit

Many cultures feature stories, historical or mythological, involving superhuman, supernatural, human, and in some instances, animal wet nurses.

The Bible refers to Deborah, a nurse to Rebekah, wife of Isaac and mother of Jacob (Israel) and Esau, who appears to have lived as a member of the household all her days. (Genesis 35:8.) Midrashic commentaries on the Torah hold that the Egyptian princess Bithiah (Pharaoh's wife Asiya in the Islamic Hadith and Qur'an) attempted to wet-nurse Moses, but he would take only his biological mother's milk. (Exodus 2:6–9)

In Greek mythology, Eurycleia is the wet nurse of Odysseus. In Roman mythology, Caieta was the wet nurse of Aeneas. In Burmese mythology, Myaukhpet Shinma is the nat (spirit) representation of the wet nurse of King Tabinshwehti. In Hawaiian mythology, Nuakea is a beneficent goddess of lactation;[14] her name became the title for a royal wet nurse, according to David Malo.[15]

Ancient Rome edit

 
A funerary stele (akin to a gravestone) erected by Roman citizen Lucius Nutrius Gallus in the 2nd half of the 1st century AD for himself, his wet nurse, and other members of his family and household

In ancient Rome, well-to-do households would have had wet nurses (Latin nutrices, singular nutrix) among their slaves and freedwomen,[16] but some Roman women were wet nurses by profession, and the Digest of Roman law even refers to a wage dispute for wet-nursing services (nutricia).[17] The landmark known as the Columna Lactaria ("Milk Column") may have been a place where wet nurses could be hired.[18] It was considered admirable for upperclass women to breastfeed their own children, but unusual and old-fashioned in the Imperial era.[19] Even women of the working classes or slaves might have their babies nursed,[20] and the Roman-era Greek gynecologist Soranus offers detailed advice on how to choose a wet nurse.[21] Inscriptions such as religious dedications and epitaphs indicate that a nutrix would be proud of her profession.[22] One even records a nutritor lactaneus, a male "milk nurse" who presumably used a bottle.[23] Greek nurses were preferred,[24] and the Romans believed that a baby who had a Greek nutrix could imbibe the language and grow up speaking Greek as fluently as Latin.[25]

The importance of the wet nurse to ancient Roman culture is indicated by the founding myth of Romulus and Remus, who were abandoned as infants but nursed by the she-wolf, as portrayed in the famous Capitoline Wolf bronze sculpture. The goddess Rumina was invoked among other birth and child development deities to promote the flow of breast milk.

India edit

By the 1500s, a wealthy mother who did not use a wet nurse was worthy of remark in India. The child was not "put out" of the household; rather, the wet nurse was included within it. The imperial wet nurses of the Mughal court were given honours in the Turco-Mongol tradition.[26]

United Kingdom edit

 
Catherine Willoughby, formerly Duchess of Suffolk, and her later husband Richard Bertie, are forced into exile, taking their baby and wet nurse

Wet nursing used to be commonplace in the United Kingdom. Working-class women both provided and received wet-nursing services.

Taking care of babies was a well-paid, respectable, and popular job for many working-class women. In the 18th century, a woman would earn more money as a wet nurse than an average man could as a labourer. Up until the 19th century, most wet-nursed infants were sent far from their families to live with their new caregiver for up to the first three years of their life.[27] As many as 80% of wet-nursed babies who lived like this died during infancy.[27]

During the Victorian era, women took in babies for money and nursed them themselves or fed them with whatever was cheapest. This was known as baby-farming; poor care sometimes resulted in high infant death rates. The wet nurse at this period was most likely a single woman who previously had given birth to an illegitimate child.[28] There were two types of wet nurses by this time: those on poor relief, who struggled to provide sufficiently for themselves or their charges, and the professionals, who were well paid and respected.

Upper-class women tended to hire wet nurses to work within their own homes, as part of a large household of servants.

Wet nurses also worked at foundling hospitals, establishments for abandoned children. Their own children would likely be sent away, normally brought up by the bottle rather than being breastfed. Valerie Fildes, author of Breasts, Bottle and Babies: A History of Infant Feeding, argues that "In effect, wealthy parents frequently 'bought' the life of their infant for the life of another."[29]

Wet nursing decreased in popularity during the mid-19th century, as medical journalists wrote about its previously undocumented dangers. Fildes argued that "Britain has been lumped together with the rest of Europe in any discussion of the qualities, terms of employment and conditions of the wet nurse, and particularly the abuses of which she was supposedly guilty."[30] C. H. F. Routh, a medical journalist writing in the late 1850s, listed the evils of wet nursing, such as the abandonment of the wet nurses' own children, higher infant mortality, and an increased physical and moral risk to a nursed child.[31] While this argument was not founded in any sort of proof, the emotional arguments of medical researchers, coupled with the protests of other critics, slowly increased public knowledge; the practice declined, replaced by maternal breastfeeding and bottle-feeding.[32]

France edit

 
The bureau of wet nurses in Paris

Wet-nursing was reported in France in the time of Louis XIV, the mid-17th century. By the 18th century, approximately 90% of infants were wet-nursed, mostly sent away to live with their wet nurses.[33] In Paris, only 1,000 of the 21,000 babies born in 1780 were nursed by their own mothers.[34] The high demand for wet nurses coincided with the low wages and high rent prices of this era, which forced many women to have to work soon after childbirth.[27] This meant that many mothers had to send their infants away to be breastfed and cared for by wet nurses even poorer than themselves. With the high demand for wet nurses, the price to hire one increased as the standard of care decreased.[27] This led to many infant deaths. In response, rather than nursing their own children, upper-class women turned to hiring wet nurses to come live with them instead. In entering into their employer's home to care for their charges, these wet nurses had to leave their own infants to be nursed and cared for by women far worse off than themselves, and who likely lived at a relatively far distance away.

The Bureau of Wet Nurses was created in Paris in 1769 to serve two main purposes: it supplied parents with wet nurses, as well as helping lessen the neglect of babies by controlling monthly salary payments.[27] In order to become a wet nurse, women had to meet a few qualifications, including physical fitness and good moral character; they were often judged on their age, their health, the number of children they had, as well as their breast shape, breast size, breast texture, nipple shape, and nipple size, since all these aspects were believed to affect the quality of a woman's milk.[35] In 1874, the French government introduced a law named after Dr. Theophile Roussel, which "mandated that every infant placed with a paid guardian outside the parents' home be registered with the state so that the French government is able to monitor how many children are placed with wet nurses and how many wet-nursed children have died".[27]

Wet nurses were hired to work in hospitals to nurse babies who were premature, ill, or abandoned.[33] During the 18th and 19th centuries, congenital syphilis was a common cause of infant mortality.[36] The Vaugirard hospital in Paris began to use mercury as a treatment; however, it could not be safely administered to infants.[36] In 1780, it began the process of giving mercury to wet nurses, who could then transmit the treatment in their milk to infected infants.[36]

The practice of wet-nursing was still widespread during World War I, according to the American Red Cross. Working-class women would leave their babies with wet nurses so they could get jobs in factories.[37]

United States edit

 
Enslaved Black woman wet-nursing white infant

British colonists brought the practice of wet-nursing with them to North America.[35] Since the arrangement of sending infants away to live with wet nurses was the cause of so many infant deaths, by the 19th century, Americans adopted the practice of having wet nurses live with the employers in order to nurse and care for their charges.[35] This practice had the effect of increasing the death rate for wet nurses' own babies. Many employers would have only kept a wet nurse for a few months at a time since it was believed that the quality of a woman's breast milk would lessen over time.[35]

Since there were no official records kept pertaining to wet nurses or wet-nursed babies, historians lack the knowledge of precisely how many infants were wet-nursed and for how long, whether they lived at home or elsewhere, and how many lived or died.[38] The best source of evidence is found in the "help wanted" ads of newspapers, through complaints about wet nurses in magazines, and through medical journals that acted as employment agencies.[35]

In the Southern United States before the Civil War, it was common practice for enslaved black women to be forced to be wet nurses to their owners' children.[33] In some instances, the enslaved child and the white child would be raised together in their younger years.[39] (Sometimes both babies would be fathered by the same man, the slave-owner; see Children of the plantation.) Visual representations of wet-nursing practices in enslaved communities are most prevalent in representations of the Mammy archetype caricature.[40] Images such as the one in this section represent both a historically accurate practice of enslaved black women wet-nursing their owner's white children, as well as sometimes an exaggerated racist caricaturization of a stereotype of a "Mammy" character.

Egypt edit

From the mid-1800s to the mid-1900s, and especially after World War I, thousands of Slovene peasant women[41] migrated via Trieste to the cosmopolitan port city of Alexandria.[42][43] There, these aleksandrinke [sl] undertook various sorts of domestic work[44] for elite Levantine households—"the highly mobile upper strata of Ottoman millets, Jewish, Maronites, Melkite active in international commerce".[45] Enough served as wet nurses that this occupation became almost synonymous with Slovene domestic workers, which resulted in some stigma back home. Married women could leave Alexandria and return to their home village, where they would conceive and bear a child and leave the infant to the care of relatives or a hired wet nurse, while they returned to Egypt to seek new employment and a new charge to nurse.

This constitutes the origin of the archetype of the aleksandrinka as a wet nurse, which came to overpower any other representation of the aleksandrinstvo, despite the fact that empirical evidence demonstrates that only a tiny fraction of alekandrinke at any time worked as wet nurses. The majority of aleksandrinke were working as nannies or chamber maids, they were not breastfeeding the children they were taking care of. The emphasis on lactaction, which marks the hypersexualization of the aleksandrinstvo, was part of the rhetorical stigma surrounding this phenomenon in Slovenia.[46]

Relationships edit

 
"Visite Chez la Nourrice" ("Visit to the Wet nurse") by Victor Adam
 
An infant who has been living with a wet nurse being taken away from its foster parents by its natural mother. By Étienne Aubry

Sometimes, the infant was placed in the home of the wet nurse for several months, as was the case for Jane Austen and her siblings. The Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 91, a receipt from AD 187, attests to the ancient nature of this practice. Sometimes, the wet nurse came to live with the infant's family, filling a position between the monthly nurse (for the immediate post-partum period) and the nanny.

In some cultures, the wet nurse was simply hired as any other employee. In others, however, she had a special relationship with the family, which could incur kinship rights. In Vietnamese family structure, for example, the wet nurse is known as Nhũ mẫu, mẫu meaning "mother".[47] Islam has a highly codified system of milk kinship known as rada. George III of the United Kingdom, born two months premature, had a wet nurse whom he so valued all his life, that her daughter was appointed laundress to the Royal Household, "a sinecure place of great emolument".[48]

Mothers who nurse each other's babies are engaging in a reciprocal act known as cross-nursing or co-nursing.

Current attitudes in Western countries edit

In contemporary affluent Western societies such as the United States, the act of nursing a baby other than one's own often provokes cultural discomfort. When a mother is unable to nurse her own infant, an acceptable mediated substitute is expressed milk (or especially colostrum), which is donated to milk banks, analogous to blood banks, and processed there by being screened, pasteurized, and usually frozen. Infant formula is also widely available, which its makers claim can be a reliable source of infant nutrition when prepared properly. Dr. Rhonda Shaw notes that Western objections to wet nurses are cultural:

The exchange of body fluids between different women and children, and the exposure of intimate bodily parts make some people uncomfortable. The hidden subtext of these debates has to do with perceptions of moral decency. Cultures with breast fetishes tend to conflate the sexual and erotic breast with the functional and lactating breast.[10]

For some Americans, the subject of wet-nursing is becoming increasingly open for discussion. During a UNICEF goodwill tour to Sierra Leone in 2008, American Mexican actress Salma Hayek decided to breastfeed a local infant in front of the accompanying film crew. The sick one-week-old baby had been born the same day but a year later than Hayek's daughter, who had not yet been weaned. The actress later discussed on camera an anecdote of her Mexican great-grandmother spontaneously breastfeeding a hungry baby in a village.[49]

Current situation elsewhere edit

Wet nurses are still common in many developing countries, although the practice poses a risk of infections, such as HIV.[10] In China, Indonesia, and the Philippines, a wet nurse may be employed in addition to a nanny as a mark of aristocracy, wealth, and high status. Following the 2008 Chinese milk scandal, in which contaminated infant formula poisoned thousands of babies, the salaries of wet nurses there increased dramatically.[50]

Notable wet nurses edit

Royal wet nurses are more likely than most to reach the historical record.

In Ancient Egypt, Maia was the wet nurse of King Tutankhamun.[51] Sitre In, the nurse of Hatshepsut,[52] was not a member of the royal family but received the honour of a burial in the royal necropolis in the Valley of the Kings, in tomb KV60. Her coffin has the inscription wr šdt nfrw nswt In, meaning Great Royal Wet Nurse In.[53]

In Asia, Lady Kasuga was the wet nurse of the third Tokugawa shōgun, Iemitsu. Lu Lingxuan was a lady in waiting who served as wet nurse to the emperor Gao Wei. She became exceedingly powerful during his reign and was often criticized by historians for her corruption and treachery. Chinese emperors honoured the Nurse empress dowager. Wet nurses were also common during the Mughal period, with almost every Mughal prince having one. Some prominent ones are Maham Anga for Akbar and Dai Anga for Shah Jahan. Shin Myo Myat was the mother of King Bayinnaung of the Toungoo Dynasty of Burma (Myanmar), and the wet nurse of King Tabinshwehti. The last Emperor of China, Puyi, described Mrs. Wang Chiao as being the only person who was able to control him: "from my infancy until the time I grew up, only my wet nurse, because of her simple language, was able to make me grasp the idea that I was like other people."

In Europe, Hodierna of St Albans was the mother of Alexander Neckam and wet nurse of Richard I of England, and Mrs. Pack was a wet nurse to William, Duke of Gloucester (1689–1700). Geneviève Poitrine was a wet nurse of the Dauphin of France, Louis Joseph, son of King Louis XVI of France and Queen Marie Antoinette. Poitrine was accused of transmitting tuberculosis to the Dauphin and triggering his infant death when aged seven,[54] although since very few pre-adolescent children die from TB, this accusation may have been the result of a misdiagnosis.[55]

Some non-royal wet nurses have also been written about. Halimah bint Abi Dhuayb was the foster mother and wet nurse of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. Petronella Muns was, with her employer, the first Western woman to visit Japan. Naomi Baumslag, author of Milk, Money and Madness, described the legendary capacity of Judith Waterford: "In 1831, on her 81st birthday, she could still produce breast milk. In her prime she unfailingly produced two quarts (four pints or 1.9 litres) of breast milk a day."[10]

See also edit

Further reading edit

References edit

  1. ^ "Wet nurse, wet-nurse, n". Oxford English Dictionary. December 1989.
  2. ^ O'Reilly, Andrea, "Wet Nursing," Encyclopedia of Motherhood (2010): 1271
  3. ^ Mrs Isabella Beeton (1861). Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management (1st ed.). London: S. O. Beeton, 18 Bouverie Street, London EC. pp. 1022–1024.
  4. ^ "Situations Vacant". The Age. Victoria, Australia. 15 June 1897. p. 8. Retrieved 18 May 2020 – via Trove.
  5. ^ a b Emily E. Stevens, Thelma E. Patrick and Rita Pickler, "A History of Infant Feeding," Journal of Perinatal Education (Spring 2009): 32-39. (accessed 10 February 2016).
  6. ^ O'Reilly, Andrea, "Wet Nursing," Encyclopedia of Motherhood (2010): 1271.
  7. ^ E. Goljan, Pathology, 2nd ed. Mosby Elsevier, Rapid Review Series.
  8. ^ Wilson-Clay, Barbara (1996). "Induced Lactation" 9 February 2010 at the Wayback Machine. The American Surrogacy Center.
  9. ^ Lecturer in Human Nutrition at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and author of The Politics of Breastfeeding
  10. ^ a b c d Groskop, Viv (5 January 2007). "Viv Groskop on women who breastfeed other people's babies – Society". The Guardian. Retrieved 21 September 2014.
  11. ^ "Destitute Commission". The Evening Journal (Adelaide). South Australia. 26 April 1884. p. 7. Retrieved 25 March 2020 – via Trove.
  12. ^ O'Reilly, Andrea, "Wet Nursing," Encyclopedia of Motherhood (2010): 1273.
  13. ^ "How Wet-Nursing Stoked Class Tensions". 16 September 2021.
  14. ^ Native planters in old Hawaii: their life, lore, and environment by Edward Smith Craighill Handy, Elizabeth Green Handy, Mary Kawena Pukui.
  15. ^ Hawaiian antiquities (Moolelo Hawaii) by David Malo
  16. ^ Keith R. Bradley, "Wet-Nursing at Rome: A Study in Social Relations," in The Family in Ancient Rome (Cornell University Press, 1986), p. 213.
  17. ^ Bradley, "Wet-Nursing at Rome," p. 214.
  18. ^ Suzanne Dixon, Childhood, Class and Kin in the Roman World (Routledge, 2001), p. 62; Bradley, "Wet-Nursing at Rome," p. 214.
  19. ^ Bradley, "Wet-Nursing at Rome," p. 201.
  20. ^ Bradley, "Wet-Nursing at Rome," pp. 201–202 et passim, especially p. 210.
  21. ^ Soranus of Ephesus, Gynaecology 2.19.24–5.
  22. ^ Celia E. Schultz, Women's Religious Activity in the Roman Republic (University of North Carolina Press, 2006), p. 54; Bradley, "Wet-Nursing at Rome," p. 202ff.
  23. ^ Evidence for bottle-feeding among the Romans is very slim, and the nutritor may have simply been a nursemaid; Bradley, "Wet-Nursing at Rome," p. 214.
  24. ^ Soranus, Gynaecology 2.44.
  25. ^ Richard Tames, Ancient Roman Children (Heineman, 2003), p. 11.
  26. ^ DĀYASORANĀGAS OF IMPERIAL MUGHAL. Balkrishan Shivram. Proceedings of the Indian History Congress Vol. 74 (2013), pp. 258-268. Published by: Indian History Congress. https://www.jstor.org/stable/44158824
  27. ^ a b c d e f Wolf, Jacqueline H, "Wet Nursing", Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood in History and Society (2004).
  28. ^ Acton, W., "Unmarried Wet Nurses", Lancet Vol. 1 (1859): 175.
  29. ^ Valerie A. Fildes, Breasts, Bottles, and Babies: A History of Infant Feeding, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1986: 193.
  30. ^ Valerie A. Fildes, Breasts, Bottles, and Babies: A History of Infant Feeding, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1986: 152.
  31. ^ Routh, C. H. F., "On the Mortality of Infants in Foundling Institutions, and Generally, As Influenced By the Absence of Breast-Milk". British Medical Journal 1 (6 February 1858): 105.
  32. ^ Valerie A. Fildes, Breasts, Bottles, and Babies: A History of Infant Feeding, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1986: 243.
  33. ^ a b c O'Reilly, Andrea, "Wet Nursing", Encyclopaedia of Motherhood (2010): 1271.
  34. ^ Romanet, Emmanuelle (1 December 2013). "La mise en nourrice, une pratique répandue en France au XIXe siècle". Transtext(e)s Transcultures 跨文本跨文化. Journal of Global Cultural Studies (8). doi:10.4000/transtexts.497 – via journals.openedition.org.
  35. ^ a b c d e Paula S. Fass (ed.), "Wet Nursing", Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood in History and Society (2004): 884–887.
  36. ^ a b c Sherwood, Joan, Infection of the Innocents: Wet Nurses, Infants, and Syphilis in France, 1780-1900. McGill-Queen's University Press (2010).
  37. ^ Ames, Fisher (1921). American Red Cross Work Among the French People. Macmillan. p. 131.
  38. ^ Golden, Janet, A Social History of Wet Nursing in America: From Breast to Bottle, Cambridge University Press (1996)
  39. ^ O'Reilly, Andrea, "Wet Nursing", Encyclopaedia of Motherhood (2010): 1271
  40. ^ Thompson, Barbara, ed. "The Body of a Myth: Embodying the Black Mammy Figure in Visual Culture". In Black Womanhood: Images, Icons, and Ideologies of the African Body. Hanover, New Hampshire: Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, 2008.
  41. ^ Go girls!: when Slovenian women left home. Ljubljana: ZRC Publishing. 2009. p. 37. ISBN 978-961-254-170-5.
  42. ^ Gender, migration, and domestic service. London: Routledge. 2013. ISBN 978-0-415-51054-7.
  43. ^ Hladnik, Mirjam Milharčič, ed. (2015). From Slovenia to Egypt: Aleksandrinke's trans-Mediterranean domestic workers' migration and national imagination. ISBN 978-3-8471-0403-2.
  44. ^ Kalc, Aleksej (2012). "Aleksandrinke - Alexandrian women: an eminent phenomenon of female emigration from Slovenia to Egypt". doi:10.13140/2.1.1535.5846. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  45. ^ Interview with Francesca Biancani, October 2018. Adjunct Professor of History and Institutions of the Modern Middle East in the Faculty of Political Science of Bologna University. [1]
  46. ^ Interview with Francesca Biancani, October 2018. Adjunct Professor of History and Institutions of the Modern Middle East in the Faculty of Political Science of Bologna University. [2]
  47. ^ "Mother's virtue gives her children great blessing". www.baolavansu.com. Retrieved 22 July 2020.
  48. ^ George the Third, his Court, and family, Volume 1. 1820. p. 73. Retrieved 17 January 2019.
  49. ^ Gerstein, Julie (11 February 2009). "Salma Hayek Breast-feeds Hungry African Babe". LemonDrop. AOL. Retrieved 11 February 2009.
  50. ^ "Got Milk? Chinese Crisis Creates A Market for Human Alternatives". WSJ. 24 September 2008. Retrieved 21 September 2014.
  51. ^ N. Reeves: Akhenaten, Egypt's False Prophet, London 2001, ISBN 0-500-05106-2, p. 180
  52. ^ Eric H. Cline, David B. O'Connor, Thutmose III: A New Biography, University of Michigan Press 2006, ISBN 0-472-11467-0 p.98
  53. ^ Hawass, Zahi; Saleem, Sahar N. (2016). Scanning the Pharaohs : CT Imaging of the New Kingdom Royal Mummies. Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press. p. 58. ISBN 978-977-416-673-0.
  54. ^ Arnaud Delalande. Le Cœur du Roi : Révolution 1 (The Heart of the King), Grasset, 2017, ISBN 978-2-246-85850-8,
  55. ^ "Death rate from tuberculosis, by age, World, 1990 to 2017". Our World in Data. Global Change Data Lab. 2017. Retrieved 9 December 2020.

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A wet nurse is a woman who breastfeeds and cares for another s child 1 Wet nurses are employed if the mother dies or if she is unable or chooses not to nurse the child herself Wet nursed children may be known as milk siblings and in some cultures the families are linked by a special relationship of milk kinship Wet nursing existed in cultures around the world until the invention of reliable formula milk in the 20th century The practice has made a small comeback in the 21st century Louis XIV as an infant with his nurse Longuet de la Giraudiere Contents 1 Reasons 2 Eliciting milk 3 Historical and cultural practices 3 1 Mythology 3 2 Ancient Rome 3 3 India 3 4 United Kingdom 3 5 France 3 6 United States 3 7 Egypt 4 Relationships 5 Current attitudes in Western countries 6 Current situation elsewhere 7 Notable wet nurses 8 See also 9 Further reading 10 References 11 External linksReasons editA wet nurse can help when a mother is unable or unwilling to breastfeed her baby Before the development of infant formula in the 20th century wet nursing could save a baby s life There are many reasons why a mother is unable to produce sufficient breast milk or in some cases to lactate at all For example she may have a chronic or acute illness and either the illness itself or the treatment for it reduces or stops her milk This absence of lactation may be temporary or permanent There was a greater need for wet nurses when the rates of infant abandonment and maternal death during and shortly after childbirth were high 2 3 There was a concurrent availability of lactating women whose own babies had died 4 Some women chose not to breastfeed for social reasons For upper class women breastfeeding was considered unfashionable in the sense that it not only prevented them from being able to wear the fashionable clothing of their time but it was also thought to ruin their figures 5 Working women faced other pressures to abandon breastfeeding including from their husbands citation needed Hiring a wet nurse was less expensive than having to hire someone else to help run the family business and or take care of the family household duties in their place 5 Some women chose to hire wet nurses purely to escape from the confining and time consuming chore of breastfeeding 6 Wet nurses have also been used when a mother cannot produce sufficient breast milk Eliciting milk edit nbsp A 16th century carving in a Belgian church showing a woman expressing her milk into a bowl A woman can only act as a wet nurse if she is lactating producing milk It was once believed that a wet nurse must have recently undergone childbirth in order to lactate This is not necessarily the case as regular breast stimulation can elicit lactation via a neural reflex of prolactin production and secretion 7 Some women have been able to establish lactation using a breast pump in order to feed an infant 8 Gabrielle Palmer 9 author of The Politics of Breastfeeding states There is no medical reason why women should not lactate indefinitely or feed more than one child simultaneously known as tandem feeding some women could theoretically be able to feed up to five babies 10 Historical and cultural practices edit nbsp A Russian wet nurse c 1913Wet nursing is an ancient practice common to many cultures It has been linked to social class where monarchies the aristocracy nobility or upper classes had their children wet nursed for the benefit of the child s health and sometimes in the hope of becoming pregnant again quickly Exclusive breastfeeding inhibits ovulation in some women lactational amenorrhea Poor women especially those who suffered the stigma of giving birth to an illegitimate child sometimes had to give their baby up temporarily to a wet nurse or permanently to another family 11 The woman herself might in turn become wet nurse to a wealthier family while using part of her wages to pay her own child s wet nurse From Roman times and into the present day philosophers and thinkers alike have held the view that the important emotional bond between mother and child is threatened by the presence of a wet nurse 12 In pre modern times it was incorrectly believed that wet nurses could pass on personality traits to infants such as acquired characteristics 13 Mythology edit Many cultures feature stories historical or mythological involving superhuman supernatural human and in some instances animal wet nurses The Bible refers to Deborah a nurse to Rebekah wife of Isaac and mother of Jacob Israel and Esau who appears to have lived as a member of the household all her days Genesis 35 8 Midrashic commentaries on the Torah hold that the Egyptian princess Bithiah Pharaoh s wife Asiya in the Islamic Hadith and Qur an attempted to wet nurse Moses but he would take only his biological mother s milk Exodus 2 6 9 In Greek mythology Eurycleia is the wet nurse of Odysseus In Roman mythology Caieta was the wet nurse of Aeneas In Burmese mythology Myaukhpet Shinma is the nat spirit representation of the wet nurse of King Tabinshwehti In Hawaiian mythology Nuakea is a beneficent goddess of lactation 14 her name became the title for a royal wet nurse according to David Malo 15 Ancient Rome edit nbsp A funerary stele akin to a gravestone erected by Roman citizen Lucius Nutrius Gallus in the 2nd half of the 1st century AD for himself his wet nurse and other members of his family and householdIn ancient Rome well to do households would have had wet nurses Latin nutrices singular nutrix among their slaves and freedwomen 16 but some Roman women were wet nurses by profession and the Digest of Roman law even refers to a wage dispute for wet nursing services nutricia 17 The landmark known as the Columna Lactaria Milk Column may have been a place where wet nurses could be hired 18 It was considered admirable for upperclass women to breastfeed their own children but unusual and old fashioned in the Imperial era 19 Even women of the working classes or slaves might have their babies nursed 20 and the Roman era Greek gynecologist Soranus offers detailed advice on how to choose a wet nurse 21 Inscriptions such as religious dedications and epitaphs indicate that a nutrix would be proud of her profession 22 One even records a nutritor lactaneus a male milk nurse who presumably used a bottle 23 Greek nurses were preferred 24 and the Romans believed that a baby who had a Greek nutrix could imbibe the language and grow up speaking Greek as fluently as Latin 25 The importance of the wet nurse to ancient Roman culture is indicated by the founding myth of Romulus and Remus who were abandoned as infants but nursed by the she wolf as portrayed in the famous Capitoline Wolf bronze sculpture The goddess Rumina was invoked among other birth and child development deities to promote the flow of breast milk India edit By the 1500s a wealthy mother who did not use a wet nurse was worthy of remark in India The child was not put out of the household rather the wet nurse was included within it The imperial wet nurses of the Mughal court were given honours in the Turco Mongol tradition 26 United Kingdom edit nbsp Catherine Willoughby formerly Duchess of Suffolk and her later husband Richard Bertie are forced into exile taking their baby and wet nurseWet nursing used to be commonplace in the United Kingdom Working class women both provided and received wet nursing services Taking care of babies was a well paid respectable and popular job for many working class women In the 18th century a woman would earn more money as a wet nurse than an average man could as a labourer Up until the 19th century most wet nursed infants were sent far from their families to live with their new caregiver for up to the first three years of their life 27 As many as 80 of wet nursed babies who lived like this died during infancy 27 During the Victorian era women took in babies for money and nursed them themselves or fed them with whatever was cheapest This was known as baby farming poor care sometimes resulted in high infant death rates The wet nurse at this period was most likely a single woman who previously had given birth to an illegitimate child 28 There were two types of wet nurses by this time those on poor relief who struggled to provide sufficiently for themselves or their charges and the professionals who were well paid and respected Upper class women tended to hire wet nurses to work within their own homes as part of a large household of servants Wet nurses also worked at foundling hospitals establishments for abandoned children Their own children would likely be sent away normally brought up by the bottle rather than being breastfed Valerie Fildes author of Breasts Bottle and Babies A History of Infant Feeding argues that In effect wealthy parents frequently bought the life of their infant for the life of another 29 Wet nursing decreased in popularity during the mid 19th century as medical journalists wrote about its previously undocumented dangers Fildes argued that Britain has been lumped together with the rest of Europe in any discussion of the qualities terms of employment and conditions of the wet nurse and particularly the abuses of which she was supposedly guilty 30 C H F Routh a medical journalist writing in the late 1850s listed the evils of wet nursing such as the abandonment of the wet nurses own children higher infant mortality and an increased physical and moral risk to a nursed child 31 While this argument was not founded in any sort of proof the emotional arguments of medical researchers coupled with the protests of other critics slowly increased public knowledge the practice declined replaced by maternal breastfeeding and bottle feeding 32 France edit nbsp The bureau of wet nurses in ParisSee also Selling Mother s Milk The Wet Nursing Business in France 1715 1914 Wet nursing was reported in France in the time of Louis XIV the mid 17th century By the 18th century approximately 90 of infants were wet nursed mostly sent away to live with their wet nurses 33 In Paris only 1 000 of the 21 000 babies born in 1780 were nursed by their own mothers 34 The high demand for wet nurses coincided with the low wages and high rent prices of this era which forced many women to have to work soon after childbirth 27 This meant that many mothers had to send their infants away to be breastfed and cared for by wet nurses even poorer than themselves With the high demand for wet nurses the price to hire one increased as the standard of care decreased 27 This led to many infant deaths In response rather than nursing their own children upper class women turned to hiring wet nurses to come live with them instead In entering into their employer s home to care for their charges these wet nurses had to leave their own infants to be nursed and cared for by women far worse off than themselves and who likely lived at a relatively far distance away The Bureau of Wet Nurses was created in Paris in 1769 to serve two main purposes it supplied parents with wet nurses as well as helping lessen the neglect of babies by controlling monthly salary payments 27 In order to become a wet nurse women had to meet a few qualifications including physical fitness and good moral character they were often judged on their age their health the number of children they had as well as their breast shape breast size breast texture nipple shape and nipple size since all these aspects were believed to affect the quality of a woman s milk 35 In 1874 the French government introduced a law named after Dr Theophile Roussel which mandated that every infant placed with a paid guardian outside the parents home be registered with the state so that the French government is able to monitor how many children are placed with wet nurses and how many wet nursed children have died 27 Wet nurses were hired to work in hospitals to nurse babies who were premature ill or abandoned 33 During the 18th and 19th centuries congenital syphilis was a common cause of infant mortality 36 The Vaugirard hospital in Paris began to use mercury as a treatment however it could not be safely administered to infants 36 In 1780 it began the process of giving mercury to wet nurses who could then transmit the treatment in their milk to infected infants 36 The practice of wet nursing was still widespread during World War I according to the American Red Cross Working class women would leave their babies with wet nurses so they could get jobs in factories 37 United States edit nbsp Enslaved Black woman wet nursing white infantBritish colonists brought the practice of wet nursing with them to North America 35 Since the arrangement of sending infants away to live with wet nurses was the cause of so many infant deaths by the 19th century Americans adopted the practice of having wet nurses live with the employers in order to nurse and care for their charges 35 This practice had the effect of increasing the death rate for wet nurses own babies Many employers would have only kept a wet nurse for a few months at a time since it was believed that the quality of a woman s breast milk would lessen over time 35 Since there were no official records kept pertaining to wet nurses or wet nursed babies historians lack the knowledge of precisely how many infants were wet nursed and for how long whether they lived at home or elsewhere and how many lived or died 38 The best source of evidence is found in the help wanted ads of newspapers through complaints about wet nurses in magazines and through medical journals that acted as employment agencies 35 In the Southern United States before the Civil War it was common practice for enslaved black women to be forced to be wet nurses to their owners children 33 In some instances the enslaved child and the white child would be raised together in their younger years 39 Sometimes both babies would be fathered by the same man the slave owner see Children of the plantation Visual representations of wet nursing practices in enslaved communities are most prevalent in representations of the Mammy archetype caricature 40 Images such as the one in this section represent both a historically accurate practice of enslaved black women wet nursing their owner s white children as well as sometimes an exaggerated racist caricaturization of a stereotype of a Mammy character Egypt edit From the mid 1800s to the mid 1900s and especially after World War I thousands of Slovene peasant women 41 migrated via Trieste to the cosmopolitan port city of Alexandria 42 43 There these aleksandrinke sl undertook various sorts of domestic work 44 for elite Levantine households the highly mobile upper strata of Ottoman millets Jewish Maronites Melkite active in international commerce 45 Enough served as wet nurses that this occupation became almost synonymous with Slovene domestic workers which resulted in some stigma back home Married women could leave Alexandria and return to their home village where they would conceive and bear a child and leave the infant to the care of relatives or a hired wet nurse while they returned to Egypt to seek new employment and a new charge to nurse This constitutes the origin of the archetype of the aleksandrinka as a wet nurse which came to overpower any other representation of the aleksandrinstvo despite the fact that empirical evidence demonstrates that only a tiny fraction of alekandrinke at any time worked as wet nurses The majority of aleksandrinke were working as nannies or chamber maids they were not breastfeeding the children they were taking care of The emphasis on lactaction which marks the hypersexualization of the aleksandrinstvo was part of the rhetorical stigma surrounding this phenomenon in Slovenia 46 Relationships edit nbsp Visite Chez la Nourrice Visit to the Wet nurse by Victor Adam nbsp An infant who has been living with a wet nurse being taken away from its foster parents by its natural mother By Etienne AubrySometimes the infant was placed in the home of the wet nurse for several months as was the case for Jane Austen and her siblings The Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 91 a receipt from AD 187 attests to the ancient nature of this practice Sometimes the wet nurse came to live with the infant s family filling a position between the monthly nurse for the immediate post partum period and the nanny In some cultures the wet nurse was simply hired as any other employee In others however she had a special relationship with the family which could incur kinship rights In Vietnamese family structure for example the wet nurse is known as Nhũ mẫu mẫu meaning mother 47 Islam has a highly codified system of milk kinship known as rada George III of the United Kingdom born two months premature had a wet nurse whom he so valued all his life that her daughter was appointed laundress to the Royal Household a sinecure place of great emolument 48 Mothers who nurse each other s babies are engaging in a reciprocal act known as cross nursing or co nursing Current attitudes in Western countries editIn contemporary affluent Western societies such as the United States the act of nursing a baby other than one s own often provokes cultural discomfort When a mother is unable to nurse her own infant an acceptable mediated substitute is expressed milk or especially colostrum which is donated to milk banks analogous to blood banks and processed there by being screened pasteurized and usually frozen Infant formula is also widely available which its makers claim can be a reliable source of infant nutrition when prepared properly Dr Rhonda Shaw notes that Western objections to wet nurses are cultural The exchange of body fluids between different women and children and the exposure of intimate bodily parts make some people uncomfortable The hidden subtext of these debates has to do with perceptions of moral decency Cultures with breast fetishes tend to conflate the sexual and erotic breast with the functional and lactating breast 10 For some Americans the subject of wet nursing is becoming increasingly open for discussion During a UNICEF goodwill tour to Sierra Leone in 2008 American Mexican actress Salma Hayek decided to breastfeed a local infant in front of the accompanying film crew The sick one week old baby had been born the same day but a year later than Hayek s daughter who had not yet been weaned The actress later discussed on camera an anecdote of her Mexican great grandmother spontaneously breastfeeding a hungry baby in a village 49 Current situation elsewhere editWet nurses are still common in many developing countries although the practice poses a risk of infections such as HIV 10 In China Indonesia and the Philippines a wet nurse may be employed in addition to a nanny as a mark of aristocracy wealth and high status Following the 2008 Chinese milk scandal in which contaminated infant formula poisoned thousands of babies the salaries of wet nurses there increased dramatically 50 Notable wet nurses editRoyal wet nurses are more likely than most to reach the historical record In Ancient Egypt Maia was the wet nurse of King Tutankhamun 51 Sitre In the nurse of Hatshepsut 52 was not a member of the royal family but received the honour of a burial in the royal necropolis in the Valley of the Kings in tomb KV60 Her coffin has the inscription wr sdt nfrw nswt In meaning Great Royal Wet Nurse In 53 In Asia Lady Kasuga was the wet nurse of the third Tokugawa shōgun Iemitsu Lu Lingxuan was a lady in waiting who served as wet nurse to the emperor Gao Wei She became exceedingly powerful during his reign and was often criticized by historians for her corruption and treachery Chinese emperors honoured the Nurse empress dowager Wet nurses were also common during the Mughal period with almost every Mughal prince having one Some prominent ones are Maham Anga for Akbar and Dai Anga for Shah Jahan Shin Myo Myat was the mother of King Bayinnaung of the Toungoo Dynasty of Burma Myanmar and the wet nurse of King Tabinshwehti The last Emperor of China Puyi described Mrs Wang Chiao as being the only person who was able to control him from my infancy until the time I grew up only my wet nurse because of her simple language was able to make me grasp the idea that I was like other people In Europe Hodierna of St Albans was the mother of Alexander Neckam and wet nurse of Richard I of England and Mrs Pack was a wet nurse to William Duke of Gloucester 1689 1700 Genevieve Poitrine was a wet nurse of the Dauphin of France Louis Joseph son of King Louis XVI of France and Queen Marie Antoinette Poitrine was accused of transmitting tuberculosis to the Dauphin and triggering his infant death when aged seven 54 although since very few pre adolescent children die from TB this accusation may have been the result of a misdiagnosis 55 Some non royal wet nurses have also been written about Halimah bint Abi Dhuayb was the foster mother and wet nurse of the Islamic prophet Muhammad Petronella Muns was with her employer the first Western woman to visit Japan Naomi Baumslag author of Milk Money and Madness described the legendary capacity of Judith Waterford In 1831 on her 81st birthday she could still produce breast milk In her prime she unfailingly produced two quarts four pints or 1 9 litres of breast milk a day 10 See also editRoman Charity works of art based on the story of a daughter feeding her dying father Selling Mother s Milk The Wet Nursing Business in France 1715 1914 a history of wet nurses in France Further reading editVapnek Lara 2022 The Labor of Infant Feeding Wet Nursing at the Nursery and Child s Hospital 1854 1910 Journal of American History 109 1 90 115 References edit Wet nurse wet nurse n Oxford English Dictionary December 1989 O Reilly Andrea Wet Nursing Encyclopedia of Motherhood 2010 1271 Mrs Isabella Beeton 1861 Mrs Beeton s Book of Household Management 1st ed London S O Beeton 18 Bouverie Street London EC pp 1022 1024 Situations Vacant The Age Victoria Australia 15 June 1897 p 8 Retrieved 18 May 2020 via Trove a b Emily E Stevens Thelma E Patrick and Rita Pickler A History of Infant Feeding Journal of Perinatal Education Spring 2009 32 39 accessed 10 February 2016 O Reilly Andrea Wet Nursing Encyclopedia of Motherhood 2010 1271 E Goljan Pathology 2nd ed Mosby Elsevier Rapid Review Series Wilson Clay Barbara 1996 Induced Lactation Archived 9 February 2010 at the Wayback Machine The American Surrogacy Center Lecturer in Human Nutrition at the London School of Hygiene amp Tropical Medicine and author of The Politics of Breastfeeding a b c d Groskop Viv 5 January 2007 Viv Groskop on women who breastfeed other people s babies Society The Guardian Retrieved 21 September 2014 Destitute Commission The Evening Journal Adelaide South Australia 26 April 1884 p 7 Retrieved 25 March 2020 via Trove O Reilly Andrea Wet Nursing Encyclopedia of Motherhood 2010 1273 How Wet Nursing Stoked Class Tensions 16 September 2021 Native planters in old Hawaii their life lore and environment by Edward Smith Craighill Handy Elizabeth Green Handy Mary Kawena Pukui Hawaiian antiquities Moolelo Hawaii by David Malo Keith R Bradley Wet Nursing at Rome A Study in Social Relations in The Family in Ancient Rome Cornell University Press 1986 p 213 Bradley Wet Nursing at Rome p 214 Suzanne Dixon Childhood Class and Kin in the Roman World Routledge 2001 p 62 Bradley Wet Nursing at Rome p 214 Bradley Wet Nursing at Rome p 201 Bradley Wet Nursing at Rome pp 201 202 et passim especially p 210 Soranus of Ephesus Gynaecology 2 19 24 5 Celia E Schultz Women s Religious Activity in the Roman Republic University of North Carolina Press 2006 p 54 Bradley Wet Nursing at Rome p 202ff Evidence for bottle feeding among the Romans is very slim and the nutritor may have simply been a nursemaid Bradley Wet Nursing at Rome p 214 Soranus Gynaecology 2 44 Richard Tames Ancient Roman Children Heineman 2003 p 11 DAYASORANAGAS OF IMPERIAL MUGHAL Balkrishan Shivram Proceedings of the Indian History Congress Vol 74 2013 pp 258 268 Published by Indian History Congress https www jstor org stable 44158824 a b c d e f Wolf Jacqueline H Wet Nursing Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood in History and Society 2004 Acton W Unmarried Wet Nurses Lancet Vol 1 1859 175 Valerie A Fildes Breasts Bottles and Babies A History of Infant Feeding Edinburgh Edinburgh University Press 1986 193 Valerie A Fildes Breasts Bottles and Babies A History of Infant Feeding Edinburgh Edinburgh University Press 1986 152 Routh C H F On the Mortality of Infants in Foundling Institutions and Generally As Influenced By the Absence of Breast Milk British Medical Journal 1 6 February 1858 105 Valerie A Fildes Breasts Bottles and Babies A History of Infant Feeding Edinburgh Edinburgh University Press 1986 243 a b c O Reilly Andrea Wet Nursing Encyclopaedia of Motherhood 2010 1271 Romanet Emmanuelle 1 December 2013 La mise en nourrice une pratique repandue en France au XIXe siecle Transtext e s Transcultures 跨文本跨文化 Journal of Global Cultural Studies 8 doi 10 4000 transtexts 497 via journals openedition org a b c d e Paula S Fass ed Wet Nursing Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood in History and Society 2004 884 887 a b c Sherwood Joan Infection of the Innocents Wet Nurses Infants and Syphilis in France 1780 1900 McGill Queen s University Press 2010 Ames Fisher 1921 American Red Cross Work Among the French People Macmillan p 131 Golden Janet A Social History of Wet Nursing in America From Breast to Bottle Cambridge University Press 1996 O Reilly Andrea Wet Nursing Encyclopaedia of Motherhood 2010 1271 Thompson Barbara ed The Body of a Myth Embodying the Black Mammy Figure in Visual Culture In Black Womanhood Images Icons and Ideologies of the African Body Hanover New Hampshire Hood Museum of Art Dartmouth College 2008 Go girls when Slovenian women left home Ljubljana ZRC Publishing 2009 p 37 ISBN 978 961 254 170 5 Gender migration and domestic service London Routledge 2013 ISBN 978 0 415 51054 7 Hladnik Mirjam Milharcic ed 2015 From Slovenia to Egypt Aleksandrinke s trans Mediterranean domestic workers migration and national imagination ISBN 978 3 8471 0403 2 Kalc Aleksej 2012 Aleksandrinke Alexandrian women an eminent phenomenon of female emigration from Slovenia to Egypt doi 10 13140 2 1 1535 5846 a href Template Cite journal html title Template Cite journal cite journal a Cite journal requires journal help Interview with Francesca Biancani October 2018 Adjunct Professor of History and Institutions of the Modern Middle East in the Faculty of Political Science of Bologna University 1 Interview with Francesca Biancani October 2018 Adjunct Professor of History and Institutions of the Modern Middle East in the Faculty of Political Science of Bologna University 2 Mother s virtue gives her children great blessing www baolavansu com Retrieved 22 July 2020 George the Third his Court and family Volume 1 1820 p 73 Retrieved 17 January 2019 Gerstein Julie 11 February 2009 Salma Hayek Breast feeds Hungry African Babe LemonDrop AOL Retrieved 11 February 2009 Got Milk Chinese Crisis Creates A Market for Human Alternatives WSJ 24 September 2008 Retrieved 21 September 2014 N Reeves Akhenaten Egypt s False Prophet London 2001 ISBN 0 500 05106 2 p 180 Eric H Cline David B O Connor Thutmose III A New Biography University of Michigan Press 2006 ISBN 0 472 11467 0 p 98 Hawass Zahi Saleem Sahar N 2016 Scanning the Pharaohs CT Imaging of the New Kingdom Royal Mummies Cairo The American University in Cairo Press p 58 ISBN 978 977 416 673 0 Arnaud Delalande Le Cœur du Roi Revolution 1 The Heart of the King Grasset 2017 ISBN 978 2 246 85850 8 Death rate from tuberculosis by age World 1990 to 2017 Our World in Data Global Change Data Lab 2017 Retrieved 9 December 2020 External links editListen to this article 22 minutes source source nbsp This audio file was created from a revision of this article dated 27 August 2023 2023 08 27 and does not reflect subsequent edits Audio help More spoken articles nbsp Media related to Wet nurses at Wikimedia Commons Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Wet nurse amp oldid 1172489253, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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