1 WEALTHY WOMEN USED WET NURSES TO FEED THEIR OFFSPRING
Wealthy Roman women did not usually breastfeed their own children. Instead, they handed them over to a wet nurse – usually a slave or hired freedwoman – who was contracted to provide the service.
Soranus, the influential author of a second-century AD work on gynaecology, prescribed that a wet nurse’s milk might be preferable in the days after the birth, on the grounds that the mother could become too exhausted to feed. He did not approve of feeding on demand, and recommended that solids such as bread soaked in wine should be introduced at six months. Soranus also pointed to the possible benefits of employing a Greek wet nurse, who could pass on the gift of her mother tongue to her charge.
Yet this flew in the face of advice from most Roman physicians and philosophers. They suggested that mother’s milk was best – both for the child’s health
