A HISTORY OF THE BREASTS
Introduction
Some Questions to consider: Why was it thought that the mother could transfer traits to their child through breast milk? What was the perceived danger of having a wet nurse suckle a child?
A Collection of Quotations from Original Sources and Images of Breasts:
Antiquity
The Middle Ages
The Renaissance
"[T]he mothers milk is more convenient and agreeable to the infant, than any other woman's, and more doth it nourish it, for because that in the mother's belly it was wont to the same, as that with the which it is best acquainted."-- Thomas Raynalde, 1540
"We may be assured, that the milk (wherewith the child is nourished two years together) hath as much power to make the children like the nurses, both in body and mind; as the seed of the parents hath to make the children like them."-- James Guillimeau, 1612
"The nurse may communicate some imperfection of her body into the child. [through milk]"--James Guillimeau, 1612
Why mothers should not breast feed after intercourse: "Because in time of carnal copulation, the subtlest and best part of the milk goeth to the vessels of the seed, and to the womb, and the worst remains in the paps, which doth hurt the child."-- The Problems of Aristotle, 1670
"The Nipples are red after Copulation, red as a Strawberry, and that is their Natural colour: But Nurses Nipples, when they give Suck, are blue, and they grow black when they are old."-- Jane Sharp, 1724
"The consent of the Womb with the Breast is most observable, the Humours passing ordinarily from one to the other whereby we may know the affections of the womb, and how to cure them, and of the State of the Child contained in it."-- Jane Sharp, 1724
"[S]trange things have come forth of the Breasts, and sometimes the menstrual Blood unchanged runs forth this way at certain Seasons. Hippocrates writes that when the Blood comes out of the Nipples, those Women are Mad."--Jane Sharp, 1724
Conclusion
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