from Of the Affection of Fathers to Their Children (Michel de Montaigne, late 1500s):
The village-women where I live call in the help of goats when they cannot suckle their children themselves; I have now two menservants who never tasted mothers’ milk for more than a week. These nanny-goats are trained from the outset to suckle human children; they recognize their voices when they start crying and come running up. They reject any other child you give them except the one they are feeding; the child does the same to another nanny-goat. The other day I saw an infant who had lost its own nanny-goat as the father had only borrowed it from a neighbour: the child rejected a different one which was provided and died, certainly of hunger.
after reading this, I did a preliminary google search for “nanny goats” and found no productive results on the topic of goat milk being a substitute for breast milk.
Breast milk is the best nutrition for infants. If this is not an option, infant formula is the alternative. EFSA (European Food Safety Association) concluded in 2012 that goat milk protein is suitable as a protein source in infant and follow-on formulas.[5] Ever since, goat milk-based infant formulas have rapidly gained popularity around the world including: the UK, Australia, Germany, Netherlands, China, Korea, Australia and New Zealand. These formulas are not produced by the infant formula multinationals but by companies that focus on specialty infant formulas. In the U.S. goat milk infant formula is not yet available.
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recognizes that goat infant formula has been thoroughly reviewed and supports normal growth and development in infants.[6]
There is only information on this topic from the 2000s and later. There is no mention of goat milk being historically used as a substitution for breast milk.
I wouldn’t be surprised, but no, my preliminary google search did not bring up Galen on the first page of results. My comment was more expressing surprise that something that was so commonplace for such a large part of human history has zero references on Wikipedia.
In the article for breast milk, the introductory paragraphs leading to the chart explaining alternatives are spent explaining why cow’s milk is an inadequate replacement. Goat milk is one of the columns there, but you actually need to parse the numbers to see that it’s much more appropriate, and the text does not help you at all.
Huh, weird, I see it referenced a bit in academic literature but every time I try to trace it back to primary sources I fail. E.g. in Dupras and Tocheri (2007) they say
Together, the results provide more substantial support for the hypothesis that infants at Kellis were breastfed and weaned slowly until 3 years of age, which is consistent with traditional infant feeding and weaning practices documented by Soranus and Galen, two ancient Greek and Roman historians (Green, 1951; Tempkin, 1956). Both Galen and Soranus recommended that supplementary foods, such as a mixture of honey and goat milk, should be introduced at 6 months of age, with gradual cessation of weaning occurring until 3 years of age.
However, when I try to find the primary sources to back up that assertion, the closest I get is that Soranus said, in Gynecol(Temkin translation)
Yet, on the other hand, it is also bad not to change to other food when the body has already become solid-not only because the body becomes moist and therefore delicate if fed on milk for too long a time, but also because in case of sickness the milk easily turns sour. For this reason, when the body has already become firm and ready to receive more solid food, which it will scarcely do successfully before the age of six months, it is proper to feed the child also with cereal food: with crumbs of bread softened with hydromel or milk, sweet wine, or honey wine.
But when blood has been assisted, and if from any single wound, or if any single thing flows into the belly or into some of the intestines. [...] Now, as for milk, some drink it having cast in a little honey and water and a bit of salt, so that it may not curdle in the stomach. And the best milk, they say, is that of temperate animals, when it remains unmixed, to be drunk immediately
So here’s our honey-and-goat’s milk mixture—described as something to give someone who has imbalanced humors or something like that, not as something to replace breast milk.
r.e. Wikipedia:
Wikipedia is not a comprehensive store of all human knowledge. Whether it should be a comprehensive store of human knowledge is a contentious topic but descriptively it is not comprehensive.
from Of the Affection of Fathers to Their Children (Michel de Montaigne, late 1500s):
after reading this, I did a preliminary google search for “nanny goats” and found no productive results on the topic of goat milk being a substitute for breast milk.
Interestingly, the wikipedia article on goat milk had this to say:
There is only information on this topic from the 2000s and later. There is no mention of goat milk being historically used as a substitution for breast milk.
Wait really? I thought Galen wrote pretty extensively about replacing human breast milk with goat’s milk in De alimentorum facultatibus?
I wouldn’t be surprised, but no, my preliminary google search did not bring up Galen on the first page of results. My comment was more expressing surprise that something that was so commonplace for such a large part of human history has zero references on Wikipedia.
In the article for breast milk, the introductory paragraphs leading to the chart explaining alternatives are spent explaining why cow’s milk is an inadequate replacement. Goat milk is one of the columns there, but you actually need to parse the numbers to see that it’s much more appropriate, and the text does not help you at all.
Galen’s wp article also makes no reference to goat milk.
Mostly it makes me wonder how many other Wikipedia articles are missing huge sections.
Huh, weird, I see it referenced a bit in academic literature but every time I try to trace it back to primary sources I fail. E.g. in Dupras and Tocheri (2007) they say
However, when I try to find the primary sources to back up that assertion, the closest I get is that Soranus said, in Gynecol(Temkin translation)
but that does not mention animal milk at all, and then Galen said, in Opera Omnia vol 6 (Kuhn, chatgpt translation)
So here’s our honey-and-goat’s milk mixture—described as something to give someone who has imbalanced humors or something like that, not as something to replace breast milk.
r.e. Wikipedia: Wikipedia is not a comprehensive store of all human knowledge. Whether it should be a comprehensive store of human knowledge is a contentious topic but descriptively it is not comprehensive.