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TELASMOS, the Virtual Museum of Breastfeeding

Welcome,

Breastfeeding is a biocultural phenomenon of humanity through which love, nourishment and wisdom are passed on from generation to generation.

It is a mixture of instinct and culture and has therefore attracted the interest of generations of artists and craftsmen from time immemorial to the present day.

Over the last 150 years, with greater or lesser frequency, depending on fashions and the value attributed to breastfeeding in each society, advertising, philately and photography have reflected the theme on numerous occasions. Cinematography, Humour and even Music have not been unaffected by this phenomenon and, incredible as it may seem, Numismatics (coins, banknotes, medals) have, on occasion, reflected Breastfeeding.

All kinds of materials have been used to represent it: paper, cardboard, paint, stone, metal, clay, ceramics, plastic.....

Introducing TELASMOS, the Breastfeeding Museum. In it we invite you to see images of Breastfeeding in the various fields of art and industry of mankind..

In the various rooms or sectionsIn this exhibition, you will be able to admire magnificent images of objects that, for the most part, constitute the collection of the Museum's management. The images have been donated by family, friends and colleagues, and all the images shown have a known real physical or digital substratum. A card with a brief explanatory text accompanies each object.

THELASMOS – Θηλασμόςin Greek Breastfeedingwith its prefix Thelas - θηλή, the nipple and through it, the feminine, comes to speak to us of that feminine and ancestral art of breastfeeding, being our pretext to pay homage to all the women of the world who breastfeed. We dedicate this Museum to them.

The Management of the Telasmos Museum

José María Paricio Talayero is a Paediatrician, Doctor of Medicine and holds a Diploma in Design and Statistics in Health Sciences. Founder and coordinator of e-lactation.orgtelasmos.org y APILAM.org. Member of the medical advisory board of La Leche League International since 2017. Author of "Tú eres la mejor madre del mundo" (2013) and "El libro de la lactancia" (2020) and more than 56 publications in scientific-medical journals. He was Head of Paediatrics Service at the Marina Alta Hospital from 1992 to 2012, accredited as IHAN in 1999. He created the first Marina Alta Breastfeeding Photographic Competition in 1997 to contribute to the social normalisation of the image of breastfeeding women.

Marie-Christine Burtin Ollier

Degree in Classical Literature, University of Lyon II (France). University Diploma in Nursing, University of Valencia. Master's Degree in Family Sciences.

Instructions for use

On the main screen:

Images of the museum's objects appear in random order. You can sort by year (in ascending or descending order) in the order box at the top right.

By putting the cursor over an image a brief summary appears above it.

For a detailed view of the objectss: by clicking on an image on the main screen, the object is displayed with its cataloguing, explanation and enlarged image. By clicking on the image of the object, it appears enlarged in the centre of the screen and, if it has more than one image, they can be viewed with the arrows to the left and right of the image or with the buttons below the image. From any of the cataloguing boxes you can click to choose a theme, section, material, continent or country to view other similar images. 

Filters: Desof the main screen pueden press the browse button to obtain a menu that allows you to filter the images by theme, section, material, continent, country or year, separately or in combination, and you can choose any term, for example: Rubens, Bernardo, Picasso, charity, piety, Paris... 

At the end of the tour, click on the Clear filters button (at the bottom of the Menu) to return to the start of the museum.

On the pages "About Telasmos", "Legal notice", "Privacy policy" or "Cokies" by clicking on the TELASMOS icon on the left, both at the top and at the bottom of the pages, the images of the museum appear again. 

Go to the room (Section) or Theme of your interest, and enjoy.

Sections and Themes

SECTIONS

  • Health documents, brochures and books

    Numerous documents refer to breastfeeding. Invoices for the payment of wet-nurses, infant follow-up cards at the "Gota de leche" clinics, etc.

    Countless brochures and breastfeeding support propaganda, educational or informational posters have been produced by various health administrations, health agencies and breastfeeding support groups.

    Stories and images appear in books The books are specialised in the subject of breastfeeding, birth and motherhood, in books that tell stories, theories and mythologies involving breastfeeding, and in graphic novels, comics or comic strips in which breastfeeding appears incidentally in some part of the plot. These books may be as old as the Bible or the Odyssey itself.

  • Sculpture

    There is a wide figurative trace of breastfeeding in statuary: from primitive fertility goddesses, through the mother-goddesses of the Greco-Roman world and Christian depictions of the Virgin Mary breastfeeding, to modern statues and non-religious representations of motherhood. 

    African maternity statues are particularly noteworthy. The theme of motherhood is universal in black African art and is expressed or preserved mainly in the form of figures or statues of various sizes, generally carved in wood, but also in terracotta and lost-wax bronze. African maternity statues do not usually express emotional ties between mother and child, as they symbolise the fertility of women and the earth, belong to the domain of the sacred and are often displayed on an altar.

  • Philately

    Philately was slow to incorporate breastfeeding images for more than 50 years of its early history. We began to see stamps with breastfeeding mothers in Europe in the 1930s, some of them for reasons of maternal and infant protection between the two world wars (morbidity and mortality in infants fed with artificial formulas were very high) and others simply for the representation of religious paintings, often in series dedicated to Christmas.

    The Christmas theme of the Virgin of milk predominates in philately throughout the Christian world or in Christianised colonies and, with some early exceptions in the 1970s in African countries, we have to wait until the 1980s, with the campaign GOBI The WHO/UNICEF Child Survival Campaign, to see a multitude of stamps dedicated to breastfeeding from sets dedicated to the four objectives of the campaign: Growth monitoring, Oral rehydration, Breastfeeding and Immunization.

    This campaign, developed between 1979 and 1982 and launched in 1983, was later expanded to GOBI-FFF: GOBI + Family planning, Food production and Female education. Many countries issued stamps commemorating the whole programme (4 GOBI or 3 FFF stamps) or parts of it between 1985 and 1989.

    There are also stamps with paintings with a secular theme and breastfeeding promotion outside the WHO campaign.

    We include in this section the Erynophilia. or "vignetophily" a set of labels, stamps, vignettes or advertising stamps in the same form as stamps, but without postal value.

  • Photographs

    This section features breastfeeding photographs not included in the postcard section.

    Since its beginnings, photography has documented breastfeeding, both with studio images and anonymous, domestic images, often taken by family members. From the end of the 19th century to the present day, from Zagourski to Salgado, many professional and adventurous photographers have taken their cameras to remote regions of Africa, Latin America and Asia.

    The photos have been taken personally or donated by family, friends, work colleagues or neighbours, and taken during holiday or business trips. Also included are photographs, professional or otherwise, acquired.

    Motifs photographed include works of art (statues, paintings) and women breastfeeding.

    They are arranged in galleries according to the country of origin of the subject photographed, the year in which the photo was taken and, where appropriate, the photographer.

  • Illustrations, posters and painting

    In the section ILLUSTRATIONS we present to you plates, illustrations and engravingsThe information is usually taken from books, magazines and newspapers.

    In many cases the illustrations have been acquired without the original book or magazine.

    In others we have the book to which it belongs, in which case we have referenced it (author, title, volume, publisher, ISBN and page of the illustration) to make it easier to find in libraries or specialised bookshops.

    You will see that this is one of the most interesting sections from an artistic and cultural point of view.

    POSTERS

    PAINTINGS. In this section we present a series of original paintings (oils, watercolours, acrylics...). 

  • Numismatics, coins and banknotes. Medallistics.

    Surprisingly enough, there have been a few countries that have issued legal tender coins and banknotes with beautiful images of breastfeeding.

    We cannot forget the enormous coinage of the Roman Empire with the representation of the she-wolf suckling the mythological founders of Rome.

    In addition to the occasional religious medal, we have also found medals and medallions commemorating various events, be they family, social, commercial or health-related, many of them by artists from the late 19th to early 20th centuries, belonging to the Art Nouveau movement.

    Art nouveau (modernisme, modern style, liberty, Jugendstil, floreale) is an artistic movement that emerged in Belgium and France, flourishing between 1893 and 1905. It was mainly a new decorative style applied to minor arts: furniture, jewellery, engraving, glass, ceramics, posters and architectural decoration. In Spain, Gaudi applied it structurally to architecture.

    Come and enjoy looking through this section which, although sparse in representation, is extremely interesting.

  • Postcards and stamps

    In 1869, the Austro-Hungarian postal administration published the first postcards for open, low-cost correspondence. In France, the front, initially used to write the address, was soon occupied by illustrations, generally advertising, and from 1891 by photographic images.

    Their low cost, improved printing techniques (invention of phototypesetting), increased literacy, commercial advertising and increased tourism all contributed to the huge success of postcards.

    In this section of the Museum, we present a collection of postcards with images of breastfeeding, which can be grouped into several main types:

    • Postcards of religious art with the Virgin Mary and the Child as the main exponents,
    • Postcards of non-religious art,
    • Ethnic postcards,
    • Commercial advertising postcards,
    • Postcards from the administrations for the promotion of Health,
    • Humorous postcards.

    There is also a small collection of prints, mostly of a religious nature.

    Have a good time in this section of the museum.

  • Other objects

    In this section various objects such as brooches are grouped together, calendarsT-shirts, T-shirts, prints, blotting paper, pins, breast pumps, telephone cards, advertising cards...

    In the middle audiovisual We can find videos, films, songs in which breastfeeding is featured as a monographic theme, in newsreels, television programmes and documentaries that deal with the subject. There is also a whole series of fictional films in which breastfeeding scenes appear incidentally.

ISSUES

  • Mother Goddess

    Prehistoric Mother Goddesses

    This is an archaeological hypothesis according to which there would have been a generalised cult of fertility and fecundity which, from the Upper Palaeolithic (30,000 to 20,000 years BC), through the Neolithic (10,000 to 2,000 years BC), would have reached historical times.

    Its main expression would be the thousands of images and statuettes representing the deity, with female forms in which her sexual or nutritional characteristics are highlighted: from the Palaeolithic they would have evolved in various civilisations into the Egyptian goddess. Isis (Esi: "she who is on the throne", "the queen"), Greek goddesses Cibeles (Kybelé, Mount Phrygia), Artemis, Demeter o Aphroditethe Venus Roman, Rea in Crete, Kali in India, the Buddhist Chinese goddess of mercy and fertility Kuan Yin, Ana or Dana in Celtic Ireland, the Pachamama with hermaphrodite characters in the pre-Inca Andes, Hine-nui-te-po in Oceania and many others, which later gave rise to other myths such as Melusina in France or the Christian Virgin Mary.

    The concept of Mother-Goddess is exhaustive, containing all the complementary opposites: wife and virgin, pregnant and barren, mother and daughter, mother of her father, creator and destroyer, masculine and feminine, the beginning and the end... Societies with this cult would have been matrilineal and of the opposite conception to the God of monotheistic religions.

    This hypothesis was put forward in the mid-19th century by the Swiss jurist Johann-Jakob Bachofen, whose work Maternal Law. The Place of Women in the History of Mankind (Bâl, 1861) defends, without any historical-scientific criteria, the idea of a primitive matriarchy prior to current patriarchal forms.

    The hypothesis, almost forgotten, regained strength in 1960 with the discovery of hundreds of female statuettes, some representing breastfeeding, in the excavations of Çatal-Hüyük in Anatolia by James Mellaart, and the strong support of feminist organisations strongly influenced by the Californian ethnologist of Lithuanian origin Marija Gimbutas, who advocated a worldwide unity of Mother-Goddess worship based on Jungian archetypes.

    Since 1990, this unscientific, unevidenced, comprehensive, uniform and reductive conception of prehistory and history has been seriously challenged.

    Roman Mother Goddesses of fertility

    Ceres and Diana (Greek Demeter and Artemis, respectively), are the Roman mother goddesses of fertility. There are numerous fertility votive terracottas depicting a seated female figure nursing twins.

    Artemis (See the section on Greek Mythology)

    Pachamama in South America

    Pachamama, literally "mother earth", is the fertility goddess of the Incas and earlier civilisations (Chavin, Tihuanaco). As a mother-goddess, she contains all the opposites, including the masculine and the feminine. Her cult, contaminated with that of the Virgin Mary of the colonisers, has survived in the Andean mountain range of Peru, Bolivia and Argentina. She is often depicted breastfeeding, selling pottery and with a moustache.

  • Greek Mythology

    Birth of the Milky Way

    Heracles (Roman Hercules), demigod as the son of the god Zeus (Roman Jupiter) and the mortal Alcmene, is taken to suckle the goddess Hera (Roman Juno), wife of Zeus, while she sleeps, in order to make him an immortal god; Hera wakes up startled, pushes him away and a stream of milk sprays across the firmament, creating the Milky Way in the sky and lilies on earth.

    Artemis, nurturing goddess

    Artemis or Artemis (Roman Diana) is one of the major divinities of the Greeks. Daughter of Zeus and Leto, like all great goddesses (Mother Goddesses) she is complex and ambiguous, as she contains all the opposites: virgin and protector of the birthing women, beneficent and cruel hunter. In Ephesus (Asia Minor) she was consecrated in the Artemision, a temple considered the sixth wonder of the world, and there her attributes, possibly originating from some oriental divinity, are those of a goddess protector of fertility and nurturer whose bust has numerous breasts which, of course, have also been interpreted as bull's testicles.

    The Iliad: Hecuba and the breast of authority

    In canto XXII of the Iliad, Hecuba asks her son, Hector, showing him the breast that suckled him, not to face Achilles, for she knows he will kill him. This theme is also taken up in Christian mythology (see "Mary the Intercessor").

  • Other non-Christian mythologies

    Egyptian Mythology: The Goddess Isis

    There are numerous depictions of Isis breastfeeding Horus. Breastfeeding was highly regarded in ancient Egypt. Isis and Horus are the forerunner of the Christian artistic tradition of the Virgin Mary breastfeeding the Christ Child.

    Although Isis is the best known, there are abundant depictions of other goddesses breastfeeding, either their own children or various pharaohs.

    The legend of Cyrus II the Great

    Astiages, grandfather of Cyrus II the Great, king of Media and Persia (556-528 BC), had his grandson killed at birth because of a dream he had in which his grandson usurped his power. The man in charge, a shepherd named Mithridates, was prevented from doing so by Spacchus, his wife, who had just had a stillborn son, whom they exchanged for Cyrus, whom she herself raised. Cyrus eventually dethroned his grandfather in 550 BC.

    This legend, narrated by the Greek historian Herodotus, is one of the many cultural variations of the ancestral archetype of the castrating father, a male authority, divine or earthly, who, fearful of having his power usurped, murders children, nephews, grandchildren or strangers: Kamsa to Krisna, Cronus to Zeus, Alexius to Telephus, Herod to Jesus?

    The Roman Charity

    El tema de la Caridad romana, en el que una mujer joven amamanta a un hombre adulto, su propio padre, ha sido muy representado en pintura y escultura, desde los frescos encontrados en Pompeya, a ejemplos posteriores, a partir del Renacimiento.

    Tiene sus orígenes en dos relatos similares del libro V de Facta et dicta memorabilia (Memorable facts and sayings) escrito por Valerio Máximo (20 a.C – 50 d.C) hacia el año 30 d.C.:

      • En el primero (5.4.7), una madre condenada a morir de inanición, no muere al cabo de semanas al ser amamantada por su hija que la visita diariamente en la prisión; es perdonada por la autoridades, conmovidas al descubrir la causa.
      • En el segundo (5.4. ext. 1), es un padre, Micon o Cimon el que es salvado en idénticas circunstancia por Pero, su hija.

    "Idem praedicatum de pietate Perus existimetur, quae patrem suum Mycona consimili fortuna adfectum parique custodiae traditum iam ultimae senectutis velut infantem pectori suo admotum aluit. Haerent ac stupent hominum oculi, cum huius facti pictam imaginem vident ...."
    "The same consideration must be given to the filial devotion of Pero, who, when his own father Mycon suffered a similar misfortune and was also confined in prison at a very advanced age, suckled him, bringing him to her breast like a baby. The eyes of men are fixed and stupefied when they contemplate a picture on this subject ...".

    En este tema, que ha sido puesto como ejemplo de devoción filial, lo terrible de la condena intenta obviar las connotaciones erótico-incestuosas del hecho.

    Temas relacionados con la Lactancia de adultos: Lactatios de San Bernardo y de otros santos y beatos como San Fulbert, San Pedro Nolasco, beato Alain de la Roche o Santo Domingo de Guzmán.  Healing mother's milk (leyenda de la lactancia de Fray Bartolomé de las Casas). La Caridad romana. Piedad filial del confucianismo.

    Puede relacionarse en otros contextos culturales y/o con diversas lactancias de adultos como las Lactatio de San Bernardo, San Pedro Nolasco, San Fulbert o del beato Alain de la Roche, la Piedad Filial del confucionismo y la Leche sanadora de adultos enfermos como la leyenda de San Bartolomé de las Casas.

    India: Putana, Krişna's poisoning nanny

    The Mahābhārata (Sanskrit epic from 200 BC to 500 AD) tells that Kamśa, a tyrant of Mathurā, because of an oracle predicting that he would be killed by a nephew, killed all his sister's children as soon as they were born. The god Vişnú was incarnated in Krişna, the seventh nephew, and managed to be hidden and raised by a shepherd and his wife Yaşoda. When Kamśa found out, he sent the giantess devil Putana, who, disguised as a wet nurse, smeared her breasts with poison, but Vişnú-Krişna suckled without the poison taking effect and, in addition to the milk, absorbed the soul of the devil, who died. When she grew up, Krişna would kill her uncle.

    Krişna, (the black, the dark one), incarnation of the god Vişnú, is the guarantor of the maintenance of the world in the Hindu religion. He is worshipped as a child, as a god of love, as a hero and as a demigod. His most famous shrines are Mathurā and Jagannātha in Puri.

    Confucianism's filial piety

    It is one of the four fundamental virtues, and perhaps the greatest in Chinese Confucianism, along with sincerity, kindness and propriety. It expresses the love and respect due to parents above all things. This devotion is carried to such extremes that the child owes them obedience all his life, and reaches situations such as the one depicted with some frequency in Chinese art: a young woman suckling an old woman, her mother-in-law, who for lack of teeth can no longer eat, while the son and grandson respectively of both protest against the theft of her food.

    Related topics: Saint Bernard's Lactatio, Roman Charity and Healing milk

    Eastern goddesses of mercy:

    Kuan-Yin, Buddhist Goddess of Mercy

    Kuan-Yin or Kwan Yin is the goddess of mercy in Chinese Buddhism and Taoism. Her name means "she who listens to the lamentations of the world".

    Legend has it that the goddess, seeing that the men were starving because the ears of rice were not germinating properly, took pity on them and squeezed her breasts, pouring milk over the rice fields with such force that she hurt herself and, after the milk, blood flowed from her breasts. The ears of corn blossomed: from the milk came white rice and from the blood, red rice. The men were never hungry again.

    Despite this story and the fact that one of the litanies dedicated to her reads "Hail, she who nursed the rice fields", there are no images of Kuan-Yin alluding to this legend, as she is usually depicted as a serene and elegant lady dressed in white, standing or seated, and sometimes with multiple arms.

    An image probably inspired by this myth is the polychrome wooden work by the painter Georges Lacombe, Isisfrom 1894, now in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris.

    Bambarazon, goddess of mercy in Borneo

    It is the same legend as that of Kuan-Yin, but in the Rungus tribe in Sabah (Borneo).

    African motherhood

    The theme of motherhood is universal in black African art. African maternity statues do not usually express emotional ties between mother and child, as they symbolise the fertility of women and the earth, belong to the domain of the sacred and are often displayed on an altar.

    Among the Yoruba and other ethnic groups, the left side of the body is associated with the sacred: in many black African maternity wards, the child suckles from the left breast.

  • Christian Mythology

    Christian Charity

    The allegory of charity in the form of a woman breastfeeding or caring for several children is very common in art, and the works are sometimes referred to as "...".Alma Parens": "protective mother".

    Charity is a Christian virtue, opposed to hatred and animosity. It is one of the three theological virtues, along with Faith and Hope. Defined in the words of Christ: "Love [...] your neighbour as yourself" (Matt 19:19 and 22:39, Mark 12:31 and Luke 10:27), St Paul equates it with Love and defines it as superior in excellence to the other two virtues (1 Cor 13:13). 

    Mythology surrounding the Virgin Mary:

    Images of the Virgin are one of the most important expressions of Christian art. Mary breastfeeding represents the human aspect of a mother nurturing the divinity incarnated in a human, Jesus, and symbolises the Catholic Church nourishing its faithful. In the 16th century the frequency of these images increased dramatically, perhaps in reaction to the Protestant Reformation.

    The theme of Mary breastfeeding Jesus, saints or other biblical characters has been depicted in various stereotypes:

        - The Virgin of Milk

    From the primitive fresco in the catacombs of Priscilla in Rome, through hieratic Byzantine and Romanesque images, softened in the Gothic period and reaching their full splendour and tenderness in the Renaissance and Baroque periods, there are countless paintings and sculptures of Mary, alone or with saints and angels, breastfeeding the Child Jesus.

    Sometimes the modesty of the work is such that either the breast is not visible, or it is tiny, or it emerges from between the clothes, implanted in an impossible place on the thorax. At other times it is a generous bust that is not hidden at all, and there are even daring paintings such as those in the Virgen del chorro de la Leche.

    The Child may also simply show a desire to suckle or may have already finished and fallen asleep. The Virgin and Child may be alone or accompanied by Saint Joseph, Saint Anne, other saints, angels or Saint John the Child, recalling the allegory of Charity.

    There are numerous places of worship to the Virgin of the Milk where mothers go to have more and better milk.

        The Flight into Egypt. The Rest on the Flight into Egypt.

    In this motif, which is widely depicted in Christian painting, Mary flees from the slaughter of the first-born ordered by Herod, the governor, and takes the opportunity to breastfeed, either in a pause on the road or on the donkey. According to the Gospel of St. Matthew (Matth. 2, 13), an angel appeared to St. Joseph ordering him to flee with his wife and child to Egypt, because Herod, king of Judea, having learned of the birth of Jesus from the Magi and fearing that he would be overthrown by him, was looking for him in order to kill him. According to the Gospel of St. Matthew (Mat 2, 13)In the night of the birth of Jesus, an angel appeared to St. Joseph ordering him to flee with his wife and son to Egypt, because Herod, king of Judea, knowing from the Magi of the birth of Jesus, and fearing that he would be dethroned by him, was looking for him in order to kill him.

        – La Sagrada Familia

    Es este un tema muy representado y difundido en el arte pictórico europeo cristiano a partir del siglo XVI (tras el concilio de Trento, contra la Reforma luterana) que tiende a difundir los valores que la iglesia católica pretende implantar sobre la familia cristiana como unidad indisoluble, núcleo del cuerpo social, vertebradora de la Iglesia y del Estado, y asignando a cada miembro un papel predominante (cuidadora y sumisa la madre, proveedor y rector el padre, obediente y piadoso el hijo). La representación mínima consiste en María, Jesús y José en situaciones cotidianas, familia nuclear a la que se añade en ocasiones, la madre de María, Santa Ana, su padre, San Joaquín, San Juanito (Juan el Bautista, primo de Jesús), ángeles y otros santos o personajes y hasta Dios Padre o el Espíritu Santo). El tema puede aparecer de modo aislado o imbricado en el tema de la huida a Egipto.

        - Mary intercessor

    The Christian idea of Mary as Intercessor, the one who intercedes before God and/or Christ to have mercy on mankind, is depicted in numerous paintings and engravings from the 15th to the 17th century, many of them within the theme of the Last Judgement, with the image of Mary showing or pointing to her bare breast to remind Christ-God of the authority conferred on her by the fact that she had suckled him and moved him to mercy.

    This maternal gesture has already been described in Greek mythology (Hecuba and the breast of authority in The Iliad).

        - Lactatio of Saint Bernard and other Saints and Prophets

    The amazing miracle or legend of the Lactatio (Lactation) of Saint Bernard has been widely depicted in Christian iconography: the Virgin Mary rewards the great Marian devotion of Saint Bernard (France, 1090-1153) in an ambiguously chaste way: by expressing the milk from one breast to offer it in a stream to the saint, in the presence of the Child, whom she holds in her free arm.

    Bernard (Fontaines-les-Dijon, 1090 - Clairvaux, 1153), a Burgundian nobleman, was a Benedictine monk and co-founder of the Cistercian order (reformation-return to the origins of the Order of Saint Benedict), founder of the Cistercian abbey of Clairvaux, preacher of the Second Crusade and guarantor of the Templars. The last of the "fathers of the Church", he was one of the most influential men of his time, with an exuberant verb and an overwhelming personality.

    But it is not only Saint Bernard who suckled from the Virgin in the Christian imagination; there are images in paintings or stained glass of saints such as Saint Dominic or Saint Peter Nolasco and prophets such as Moses or Elijah suckled by the Virgin Mary.

    Related topics: Roman charity, Confucianism filial piety, healing milk.

    Jesus Christ "breastfeeding

    Catherine (Siena 1347-1380), a Dominican nun and Doctor of the Catholic Church, is known for her great devotion and mystical love for Jesus Christ. She has been depicted drinking the blood from the side of Jesus Christ wounded by a spear after his death by crucifixion (John 19:34), in an image that clearly imitates breast-feeding.

    The maternal and nurturing Jesus Christ of Christian mysticism has occasionally been depicted with developed female breasts in paintings that were later retouched to conceal them. One very explicit one, once the original was restored, is the impressive Lamentation around Christby an anonymous author, on display at the Rose Hospital Museum in Lessines, Belgium.

  • Breastfeeding after death

    Breastfeeding after the death of the mother:

    La Difunta Correa

    Around 1840, in Caucete, province of San Juan, Argentina, lived María Antonia Deolinda Correa, a happily married young woman with a son a few months old whom she was breastfeeding. Her husband had been recruited by montonero troops in the Civil War. Anguished at not having any news of him, Deolinda set off with her son to look for him in the San Juan desert towards La Rioja. On the Vallecito hill, he ran out of water and strength, and died. A few days later, some muleteers discovered her dead, while her child had survived by suckling at the dead mother's breast.

    Although there is no documentary evidence of these relatively recent events, a shrine has been erected in honour of the "Difuntita Correa" with multiple chapels on the hill of Vallecito, and thousands of pilgrims visit it to ask for favours of all kinds. Mothers and pregnant women ask for good milk. Her cult, not recognised by the Catholic Church, has spread to Argentina and Uruguay.

    The King of Marseille's wife

    A similar story is told centuries earlier in The Golden Legend (1261) by Jacopo de la Voragine (1230- 1298): a prince of Marseilles, returning from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, picks up his newborn son, who, through the intervention of Saint Mary Magdalene, has survived for months on an islet in the Mediterranean Sea, suckling his mother who died of childbirth on the high seas on the outward voyage. They were disembarked for fear that the dead mother would bring them bad luck on the crossing. There is an image in the cloister of Tarragona Cathedral, in the 1536 altarpiece in the chapel of Santa Maria Magdalena, attributed to Francesc Olives.

    Breastfeeding after infant death

    "Sometimes we see two husbands going, after six months, to shed tears over the grave of a son, and the mother pouring the milk from her breasts there." Written by Guillaume Thomas François Raynal in 1777.

  • Shared breastfeeding, someone else's milk

    Mercenary breastfeeding

    In most societies, many women have avoided breastfeeding, entrusting their children to be raised by other women who were paid for this service: wet nurses or wet nurses. This practice has been attested as far back as 4,000 years ago (Babylonian Code of Hammurabi), until about 50 years ago, when it has been almost completely banished by the feeding of modified cow's milk.

    The subject of wet nurses has generated countless images in painting, sculpture, illustrations and cartoons, as well as a wealth of literature.

    Breastfeeding in solidarity

    There are many moving experiences of women who breastfeed other women's children out of solidarity and generosity, usually in dramatic circumstances. Some of them have been recorded in philately, such as that of Erika Orellana, the Honduran policewoman who breastfed an abandoned baby in the police station. Isabel Caro, a woman from Seville, breastfed a baby from North Africa who arrived on the beach in a boat while his mother was recovering. Migrant women workers in Spain, in the absence of laws that effectively protect their maternity rights, take turns to breastfeed the children of those who are working... and so many other anonymous stories that someone should take the time to compile so that the history of breastfeeding is not incomplete.

    Human milk banks

    Milk banks, since their inception at the dawn of the 20th century, have produced specific images of breastfeeding.

  • Breastfeeding as a moral, civic or patriotic duty

    Since the 19th century, when governments of all stripes have been in need of a population to support the country's economic production, usually after wars that have decimated the population, they have used all kinds of ideological, moral and even punitive pressures on women, exhorting them to have children and raise them in good health. There are numerous posters, pamphlets and books demanding the "sacred duty to breastfeed".

    In a poem by the French poet Jean Rameau (Gaas, Landes, 1858-1942) a wet nurse, while breastfeeding, complains that the suckling is not a girl, since at least she would not be raising a child to be killed in the next war.
  • The healing milk

    Since ancient times, women's milk has been considered a remedy for various adult illnesses. Pliny the Elder, in book XXVIII, chapter 21 of his Natural History, recommends it for fevers and certain poisonings, for diseases of the eyes, ears and lungs, and for fatigue in the elderly. In a correspondence between members of the Borgia family in 1569, it is reported that an aba- desa de las Descalzas, a member of this family, had improved from an illness by "suckling milk from a woman without any other maintenance". The Encyclopédie by Diderot and d'Alambert considers mother's milk to be a good treatment for marasmus and tuberculosis.

    Stories and illustrations of adults, the sick or the elderly being nursed for curative purposes are not uncommon. In the 372nd night of The Arabian Nights, a king suffering from leprosy is cured by drinking a bottle of milk from Queen Yamlika. In The Incas or the Destruction of the Empire of Peru, a melodramatic fictional novel written by Jean François Marmontel in 1777, Bartolomé de las Casas, deathly ill, is cured after being breastfed by the Inca priestess Cora.

    Today, based on information that lacks scientific rigour, there is a trade in breast milk, often via the internet, based on cancer and physical vigour that, in addition to being ineffective for its intended purpose, carries risks of infection and fraud for consumers.

    Related topics: Roman charity, Filial piety of Confucianism, Lactatio of St. Bernard.

  • Humour and eroticism in breastfeeding

    Humour is also made out of breastfeeding. Jokes and other humorous descriptions with better or worse fortune, tact and sensitivity have been published in different formats: newspaper article, comic strip, postcard, etc.

    There is an ambiguous discourse about the female breast, especially in the West. Its dual function, reproductive-nutritional on the one hand and erotic-sensual on the other, is responsible for most of the jokes about breastfeeding. 

    The discomfort that women may experience when breastfeeding in public is linked to an ambiguous socio-cultural attitude towards it. Despite the dual erotic-sensual and nutritional-reproductive function of a woman's breast, society tends to magnify the erotic purpose to the detriment of the other, and in practice censures it. It is difficult to find in magazines, cinema or television images of breastfeeding or of a woman's breast in any other attitude or with any other purpose than erotic.

    In 1997, the Paediatrics Department of the Marina Alta Hospital (Alicante) launched the first Breastfeeding Photo Contest as a means of recovering and promoting the image of breastfeeding women. This competition continues to be organised annually by the support group. Nodrissa Group and has been the mother of around a dozen similar competitions in various autonomous regions and the source of a huge image base for breastfeeding promotion.

  • Breastfeeding promotion

    Content goes here ...

  • Advertising

    Advertising has not been alien to the subject of breastfeeding. Forgotten by advertisers when it ceases to be frequent or socially appreciated, it is recovered in times when breastfeeding becomes a rising social value. Breastfeeding then becomes the "hook" that sells other products.

  • Milk from animals

    Objects are exhibited that have to do with both the theme  Feeding of animal milk (or Infant Feeding with Milk from Other Mammals), which could be referred to as "No breastfeeding"as with the theme Animal lactationThe following are some of the scenes of breastfeeding of other mammals.

    All objects are listed here that refer to ways and means of milk feeding other than breastfeeding, whether by mother or wet nurse.

    One can see images of babies being fed with animal milks, directly from their udders or through bottles, or advertisements for artificial infant formulas or, most cynically, advertisements in which this form of feeding has been used as a stereotype, implying that it is the normal way of feeding newborns or a valid and even superior alternative to breastfeeding.

    A whole series of myths and legends about gods and men suckled by various animals have been the source of numerous images and have become reality since the second half of the 19th century, feeding human offspring with products derived from cow's milk. 

    Indeed, in the words of Professor Bo Vahlquist (WHO, 1981): "... by the turn of the century the foundations had been laid for the systematic feeding of infants with milk other than human milk [...] The early artificial feeding of infants constitutes the largest uncontrolled experiment in the world".

    The god Zeus suckled by the goat Amalthea

    Cronus was the son of Uranus and Gaea, parents of all the gods in Greek mythology. Uranus, for fear of being dethroned, killed all his children by throwing them off the cliff, until Cronus, with the help of his mother, castrated his father with a sickle, who predicted that a son of his would take power from him.

    Against this background, Cronus devoured all the children he had with his wife and sister, Rhea. Rhea, aided by her mother Gaea, managed to hide her son, Zeus, in the grottoes of Mount Ida in Crete, where he was cared for by the nymph Adrastea and suckled by the goat Amalthea. Rhea deceived her husband by presenting him with a stone wrapped in rags which Cronus swallowed, believing it to be his son Zeus, who, when he grew up, dethroned his father.

    Tèlephos suckled by a doe

    Tèlephos, Tèlephos, legendary king of Mysia, was the son of the priestess Auge, seduced by the demigod Heracles. Auge was the daughter of King Aeleus of Tegea; the latter, supposing that a plague declared in the region was the result of the defilement of the temple, had the child abandoned shortly after birth, but the baby did not die because it was suckled by a hind, until a peasant found it and presented it to Teutras, king of Mysia, who took it in as his own son.

    It would not have been easy to survive on hind milk because of its very high protein content, seven times higher than that of hind milk.

    His legend is narrated in the Mythological Library, an anonymous text from the early Christian era, falsely attributed to Apollodorus, an Athenian scholar of the 2nd century BC. C.

    Romulus and Remus suckled by a she-wolf

    Lupam sitientem ex montibus, qui circa sunt, ad puerilem vagitum cursum flexisse; eam summissas infantibus adeo mitem praebuisse mammas (A thirsty she-wolf from the nearby mountains strayed towards the crying children and meekly bent over them and offered them her breasts).

    This is the wonderful and incredible description of Titus Livy (59 BC - 17 AD) in his Ab Urbe Condita (History of Rome from its foundation, 1:4). Incredible, because the composition of the milk of canids is so different from that of women that the children would have died within a few days due to its very high protein content.

    Titus Livy himself does not concede the veracity of what he has just recounted, for a few lines further on he thinks that the legend may be due to the profession of the shepherd's wife who took the children (a whore in a brothel, a "she-wolf", which is what it means in Latin).

    The Scandinavian creation myth. The giant Ymer and the nurturing cow Authumla

    This complex myth can be summarised as follows: from the melting of the primeval ice was born an immense cow, Authumla, "the great nurse", from whose udders flowed four rivers of milk, which fed the giant Ymer, whose remains, once dead, formed the earth, the sea, the rivers and the celestial vault.

    The Modern Myth: The Jungle Book

    The English writer and 1907 Nobel Prize winner Joseph Rudyard Kipling (Bombay, 1865-London, 1936), in his well-known The Jungle Book of 1894, describes an abandoned boy, Mowgli, raised by a she-wolf. The story has been made into a film and made universally popular by Walt Disney.

    Both the story of Romulus and Remus and the story of Mowgli are related to the proven existence of wild children, abandoned children, without contact for years with humans and raised by animals (dogs, wolves, sheep, bears...). Abandonment must occur at ages when they are no longer young infants, otherwise their survival is not plausible.

    Breeding with goats

    In Cuba, there was a long-standing tradition of training goats (chivas) as mistresses to suckle young children. Eliza McHatton-Ripley fled with her family and two slaves from the American Civil War, and lived in Matanzas (Cuba) between 1865 and 1875 at the sugar mill "Desengaño". In his book From flag to flag (1869) writes: "Visiting a family in our neighbourhood, the baby cried; immediately a goat entered the room, lay down on the floor in a convenient position for the infant to obtain its food, and the baby seized the occasion as eagerly as it would have done from its own mother. The goat, having done its maternal duty, would carefully separate from the kid and disappear. A goat so well taught is held in high esteem, and passed from one family to another as a monthly nanny.

    Goat's milk, although popularly considered to be more digestive than cow's milk, shares a great similarity with cow's milk in its composition, and is therefore not suitable for feeding infants under six months of age.

    The donkey to feed infants

    The milk of equidae, especially mare's and donkey's milk, is more similar in composition to that of women than that of cows or goats. It is very tolerable and easily digestible by the human infant, as it has a similar protein composition, although as it contains much less fat, it also has considerably fewer calories.

    Donkeys were used in hospices and hospitals to feed abandoned and sick children, even making them suckle directly from the animal's udders, and the hawkers of fresh donkey milk were famous in the streets of European and American cities until the first half of the 20th century.

    Due to lower milk production, fewer animals and less docile animals, the trade and the animal milk feed industry shifted towards cow's milk.

    The triumphant cow of the 20th century

    Despite the enormous differences in their composition, cows had a series of characteristics (docility, easy reproduction and enormous milk production) so that industry and chemistry in the second half of the 19th century worked together to achieve modifications of the milk that would bring its composition closer to that of a woman, so that it would be tolerable for the metabolism of the human infant.

    Dilution to lower protein levels and the addition of sugar and fat to compensate for their dilution, together with Pasteur's advances in limiting bacterial growth, were key elements in a process which, due to factors such as pressure from an industry that was the embryo of thriving multinational baby food companies, led to one of the most important and successful infant feeding practices of the time, the scientifically driven, social movements for women's liberation, and the often self-interested collaboration of a medical class that was well aware of the increased mortality caused by this practice, the scientism of the time, the social movements for women's liberation and the often self-interested collaboration of a medical establishment that was well aware of the increased mortality caused by this feeding practice, led to one of the greatest disasters of the 20th century: the serious damage to the ancestral culture of breastfeeding.

    The culture of breastfeeding has been in serious danger of extinction, with terrible consequences for the reproductive health of humanity, as the morbidity and mortality caused by commercial infant formula feeding far exceeds that of breastfeeding in both mothers and babies.

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