Las Casas malade soigné par des sauvages, painting by Louis Hersent (1777-1860), 538 x 646 mm, presented at the Paris Salon of 1814. (Private collection USA. Illustration in "Hersent, history painter and portrait painter" by Anne-Marie de Brem, Ed. Paris-Musées, 1993. ISBN 2-87900-119-6).
Hersent is inspired by the engraving of Jean-Michel Moreau the Younger (1741-1814) on page 217 of volume 2 of Jean Francois Marmontel's melodramatic fictional novel "The Incas or the Destruction of the Empire of Peru", published in 1777, which recounts the love affairs of the young conquistador Alonso with the Inca priestess Cora during Pizarro's conquest of the Inca empire. In chapter 43, Las Casas, who is deathly ill, is visited by an Indian cacique converted by him to Christianity, who tells him that, as his illness can be cured with a woman's milk, he has brought his own to save him with her milk. Although the friar tries to refuse, he is convinced by the beautiful Indian and her husband and, in the presence of Pizarro and two of his soldiers, he is nursed and cured.
(full text of chapter 43 in French and Spanish).
This enormously successful novel was published numerous times throughout the 19th century and translated into English, Italian, Spanish and Russian. It is partly inspired by the 1552 account "Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias" by the Dominican friar Bartolomé de Las Casas (Seville 1472 - Madrid 1566), a great defender of the Indians and bishop of Chiapas.
Since ancient times, women's milk has been regarded as a remedy for various diseases, also in adults. Pliny the Elder recommends it for eye diseases and for fatigue in the elderly and D'Alambert and Diderot's Encyclopaedia gives it as good for treating marasmus and tuberculosis.
Related topics: Breastfeeding adults: Lactatio Saint Bernard, Saint Fulbert, Alain de la Roche. Roman charity. Confucianism filial piety.