From the very first paragraph of Mary Watkins’s Maternal Solicitude, or Lady’s Manual (New York, 1809), h/t to my graduate student, Clarissa:
WHEN a mother does not nurse her own infant, she, in many instances, does violence to nature; a custom unknown among the most polished in the purest ages of Greece and Rome. The sudden check given to this great natural evacuation of milk, at a time when her weakly state renders her unable to sustain so great a shock, is often of the worst consequences to herself; and the loss to the child is much greater than in commonly apprehended. A woman in this case, runs the imminent risk of her life from a milk-fever; besides the danger of swellings and imposthumes of the breast, and such obstruction in them as lay a foundation of a future cancer, (7).
Yes, a 205-year old breastfeeding manual on the first page threatens the reader with both the loss of her child and CANCER! But let’s not get too smug today. Maternal Solicitude is almost as subtle as modern pro-breastfeeding propaganda.
Happy Mother’s Day! Try to avoid both infanticide and suicide, you powerful, fearsome monsters!