Breastmilk

Liquid Gold

Breastmilk, as one of the only fluids to pass freely between humans, has powerful conceptual potential. Referred to in breastfeeding literature as “liquid gold,” breastmilk has been understood as integral to the transmission of both physical and moral characteristics from mother to child. Historical texts counsel women to maintain not only their physical health, but also to cultivate a state of emotional equilibrium, as it was thought that violent emotions and passions could directly impact the moral, physical, and intellectual development of the child. More problematic still was the issue of class. The breast-milk of wet nurses, who were drawn overwhelmingly from the lower classes, was considered dangerous to upper-class infants, thus contributing to the significant scrutiny of wet nurses in surrogate nursing arrangements. More recent debates around the toxicity of breastmilk have focused not on the moral shortcomings of the mother or wet nurse, but rather on the environmental contaminants present in mother's milk. Research suggests that human breastmilk contains, among other things, pesticides, dioxins, and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). Nevertheless, breastmilk can equally be understood to heal the body: the very toxicity of breastmilk suggests its potential to remove toxins from the body. This provocative theory was behind the establishment of the experimental 18th-century Vaugirard Hospital. Established in Paris in 1780 for the express purpose of treating syphilitic infants, the hospital imagined the breastmilk of syphilitic wet nurses as medical technology, using it as a vehicle to transmit mercury (the most common treatment for syphilis at the time) from syphilitic mother to syphilitic infant.