History of artificial baby feeding

This topic seems to come up with unnerving frequency among the lactivist community, and there is a lot of misinformation going out about how long artificial baby feeding has been going on - most people think it's a post-WWII societal issue, hand-in-hand with the increase in births occurring in hospitals. Yes, it increased then and breastfeeding rates dropped, but we also have better statistics across social classes in the 20th century. Furthering the misperception that breastfeeding was the way ALL babies were fed prior to the 20th century keeps us from looking at this important factor in infant and maternal mortality rates of our foremothers. Only the wealthy could generally afford a true full-time wet nurse (to the detriment of that woman's own nursling, supposing she hadn't already weaned her baby, since it doesn't seem common to allow the wet nurse to bring her own infant along on the job and tandem nurse the two), though informal cross-nursing (nursing mothers sharing the "duty" of feeding their infants so that one could go do something else for a while) has been going on most likely since before we evolved into humans (it's a common primate practice when there are 2 or more lactating females available to care for the infants).

Lack of breastfeeding, especially in the first few days, is detrimental to the mother in many ways - the act of IMMEDIATELY breastfeeding after birth encourages uterine contractions that help prevent hemorrhage, helps shrink the uterus quickly, encourages the ongoing release of hormones to facilitate bonding, relieve pain and promote rest via continued release of ocytocin, and on and on. There are "traditional" societies even today that discourage women from feeding their newborns their colostrum, believing it to be worthless until the "real milk" comes in, and proscribe waiting 5 days before feeding the infant from the breast, substituting various alternatives (many of which contain honey) to keep the baby hydrated instead. This was (and still is) common practice in parts of India. What effect does this have on infant mortality? Maternal hemorrhage? Successful initiation of breastfeeding, when the baby has been allowed to feed from a non-breast for the first 5 days? Doesn't take much to figure out the effect on all these rates might be, especially now when "modern alternatives" are so widely available and socially acceptable. But when women hand off their babies to be fed other than at their own breasts from birth, they increase both the infant and maternal rates of early postpartum complications. And when new mothers aren't supported in their efforts and struggles to nurse their newborns, they're set up for depression over their supposed "failure" - a failure that is more due to our society than anything to do with the mother. Pushing women to not nurse openly and publicly places further barriers to the natural learning of how to accomplish the task in those first early days, as much as lack of availability of profession lactation consultants (not that both groups don't sometimes give misguided or downright wrong advice - it happens, but I believe it's less likely than misinformation coming from anyone without firsthand experience at nursing, regardless of gender).

Before the 20th century we can just make presumptions based mostly upon bodies in cemeteries/mummies/etc about how many babies died at which ages in which social classes (death records are not nearly as common for anyone below upper middle class prior to the industrial revolution, especially outside of urban centers). Not the best data collection method by any stretch of the imagination. Some of these early deaths do include clues as to infant feeding method (ancients tended to bury feeding containers with the infants that weren't breastfed). There are surviving medical advice documents from ancient times that talk about when infants should be weaned, how often they should be fed, etc. So it's not just modern morons encouraging mothers to put their babies on feeding schedules, to watch the clock instead of the baby. They have a long, sordid history of giving this shoddy advice - surprising that it's mostly from males who were probably not even nearby when their own children were being nursed.

Artificial infant feeding is much MUCH older than 50 years. The Sears catalog from 1897 contained at least 8 different brands of artificial baby milk. There are infant feeding artifacts left over from the ancient Greeks. Wet nursing wasn't the only way a baby would survive, but it definitely gave the kid a better chance of survival (in the Victorian era only 20% of infants made it to their 2nd birthday, one wonders how many of those deaths were due to not being breastfed combined with other factors of Victorian life). These are facts that I've researched in the past when people have tried to tell me how dangerous childbearing is because our ancestors DIED in childbirth. I point out that sanitation has never been as good as it is now and a great many of the "ancestors" who were well off enough to get their statistics recorded (not mine, I'm of peasant stock!) were handing off their babies to be fed elsewhere so they could get pregnant again ASAP (and deplete their bodies' nutrient supplies, not letting their uterus have a rest, etc etc etc - the risks of frequent, rapid-fire childbearing are well known to anyone who has dealt with breeding any species of mammal). Of course, young mothers did die, for various reasons (not all associated directly with childbirth) and other ways of feeding their infant if no other lactating woman was nearby had to be devised. Our ancient ancestors were ingenious, just as we are. The infant found in the group of bodies called the Cherchen Mummies has an artificial infant feeder buried with it, the baby has been dead for 3,000 years. The family is presumed to be nomads (they have Caucasian features though they died in China) and it's postulated that the mother died before the infant did.

Here are some online references:
early infant feeders - http://www.babybottle-museum.co.uk/the%20early%20feeders.htm
Ted Greiner's Breastfeeding History - http://www.geocities.com/HotSprings/Spa/3156/history.htm (hate using Geocities references but it's the version available online)
An article about Cherchen mummies - http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_20060828/ai_n1669651


Oops.. I think my sociology degree is showing ;) Darnit I want to go to graduate school already! *sigh* Kids first, academia later.