Breastpump technology and 'natural' motherly milk in Enlightenment France

This paper focuses on the development of breastfeeding technology in eighteenth-century France and its place in broader public debates over the virtues of maternal breastfeeding and the state's role in stimulating population growth at a time of (perceived) demographic crisis. Our discussion attends to the breadth of historical actors with stakes in the century's ongoing breastfeeding debate-mothers, midwives, wetnurses, infants, and scientific tinkers-as well as the broader social and moral concerns that fuelled them. It pays particular attention to gender dynamics, including the tensions and collaborations which coloured the relationships between the men who developed and marketed breastpump technologies to female consumers, while proselytising their views on the virtues of breastfeeding and motherly milk. We highlight instrument makers' role in developing artificial feeding aids in order to empower mothers and their suckling infants to practice a “natural” human activity, while also remaining critical of their aims and commercial interests.