Milk and Miracles: Heteroglossia and Dissent in Venetian Religious Art after the Council of Trent

This essay investigates Benedetto Caliari's Nativity of the Virgin (1576) with its provocative and unorthodox depiction of a bare-breasted wet-nurse in the context of both Protestant and Catholic criticism of “indecent” religious imagery. Reformers on both sides drew a connection between the Virgin Mary's ostentatious display of her lactating breasts and her presumed, derided, or hoped-for miracle-working capacities or intercessory powers. In post-Tridentine Venice, several artists, including Tintoretto and Veronese, all of whom were connected to the Scuola de’ Mercanti that commissioned Caliari's painting, employed religious breastfeeding imagery in a wide array of iconographies in order to express dissent with the Counter-Reformation church's emphasis on orthodoxy. In contrast to writers, artists were able to claim a certain degree of nonconformity and freedom from prosecution. In light of Mikhail Bakhtin's concept of heteroglossia, it is argued that religious lactation imagery after Trent produced irony, parody, doubt, and dissent.

BREAST MILK AFFECTS CHILD MORBIDITY STATUS: AN UNEXPLORED EVIDENCE FROM AYURVEDA

Breast milk is the main diet of infants as it provides all the nutrients for normal growth and development of a baby from the time of birth to the first 6 months of life. This dynamic fluid provides a diverse array of bioactive substances to the developing infant during critical periods of brain, immune system and gut development. In Ayurveda though breast milk is vital for children and infants but it may be vitiated with Dosha (regulatory functional factors of the body) due to the faulty lifestyle of the Dhatri (wet-nurse or mother) which may lead to various type of morbidities in child according to predominance of Dosha. Ancient Ayurveda scholars have also mentioned effect of breast milk according to taste and texture along with management of morbidities caused by these predominance’s of Dosha. Ayurveda have stressed very much on this aspect and have given a detailed account of abnormalities of breast milk and their consequences. Knowledge of this fact is of key significance for the proper growth and development of a child. Therefore, evidences from Ayurveda have been compiled in this article to understand the effect of breast milk on child morbidity status.

The Erotic Family: Structures and Narratives of Milk Kinship in Premodern Japanese Tales

This essay proposes that “milk kinship,” which upper-class individuals in premodern Japan formed with their milk kin—a menoto (wet nurse) and a menotogo (foster sibling)—occupies the core of an institutionalized erotic fosterage. In this “menoto system,” the surrogate mother's lactating body and erotic-affective labor became the connective tissue to bind two interclass families, creating a symbiosis that fortified the existing sociopolitical power structures. Around the tenth century, many vernacular tales started to feature menoto characters. While a typical menoto is the protagonist's homely, asexual, motherly confidante, her derivative construct—the menotogo of the protagonist—is often cast in an erotic light. In the four texts examined in this essay, menotogo valorize their erotic agencies to benefit their charges through sexual-affective labor or through an indirect method. The latter entails the formation of a “love square” in which two menotogo become lovers and then help their respective charges do the same.

Children «on the side»: feeding industry on territory of Tavrida Province in late XIX–early XX centuries

Russian Empire in the second half of the XIX–early XX centuries gradually entered the era of modernization of political, economic and social institutions. The disintegration of the patriarchal family entailed a massive exodus of women to cities, which in turn turned out to be on the quantitative indicators of illegitimate births. Lack of funds for food, prompted mothers to leave the child to the mercy of fate. Statistical data is stating that the foundlings grew from year to year. By the end of the XIX century each issue of the periodical press, published in the territory of the Tauride province, contained several reports about foundlings. All children were sent to an orphanage. A wet nurse was assigned to the child, who was supposed to replace his mother. The direction of the research is to describe the patronage system in the Tauride province of the late XIX–early XX centuries

Woman, Mother, Wet Nurse: Engine of Child Health Promotion in the Spanish Monarchy (1850–1910)

In Spain, the wet nurse increased the survival of children through care and breastfeeding of other women’s children. They had a great development together with the Spanish monarchy between 1850 and 1910. The aim is to identify the role of wet nurses in the Spanish monarchy and the survival of the royal infants (s. XIX–XX). A scoping review is presented to study documents about the wet nurse in the Spanish monarchy. Applying the dialectical structural model of care (DSMC). Recognizing five thematic blocks that shape the historical-cultural model. Books, decrees and databases were analyzed: Scopus, Scielo, Dialnet, Cuiden, Medline/Pubmed, CINAHL, Science Direct and Google Scholar, from January to July 2020. The selection process was rigorous because it was difficult to choose. They had to overcome medical and moral exams. The selected rural northern wet nurses emigrated to Madrid. The contract was regulated by laws and paid. Wet nurses were hired by the monarchy due to health problems of the biological mother and a need for greater offspring. The wet nurse wore a typical costume, a symbol of wealth. The northern wet nurses hired by the monarchists have been the engine that has promoted the health of infants through the breastfeeding process.

Note on Text and Translations

Part III features the Greek texts and English translations of two treatises and nine letters attributed to Pythagorean women. Fragment I of Perictione’s On Woman’s Harmony presents a theory of harmony and gives specific instructions on how a woman may achieve it. Phintys’ On Woman’s Self-Restraint engages with the question of whether virtues are gender-specific and, indirectly, whether women should practice philosophy. Two fictitious Doric letters feature practical advice for a virtuous woman. In To Cleareta, Melissa teaches that a wife’s duty is to accommodate her husband’s wishes and refrain from excessive adornment. In To Phyllis, Myia offers instructions on how to hire a wet-nurse who will be able to bring up a healthy infant. Three fictitious letters of advice by Theano argue that women must show exemplary self-restraint. To Euboule chastens a mother for indulging her children; To Nicostrate advises a wife to tolerate her husband’s philandering; To Callisto instructs her addressee how to treat slave-women. Four playful late antique notes ventriloquizing Theano, To Rhodope, To Eucleides, To Timonides, and To Eurydice, engage with the earlier letters; as does Theano to Eurydice, composed by the historian Theophylact Simocatta.

Ipsa Dixit

Chapter IV analyses five fictitious letters of advice from the early Imperial period by Melissa, Myia, and Theano. These letters (like Platonic epistles) remain in tension with theoretical discourses. The chapter offers close readings of each of them to demonstrate that Pythagorean women offer a subtle critique of medical and philosophical texts on a number of topics, including infants, the education of children, and relationships with slaves. This strategy is particularly prominent in Myia’s letter about hiring a wet nurse, which goes against the advice of medical writers and Stoic philosophers, but corresponds to the practice and advice preserved in Greek letters from Egypt from this period. More clearly than the treatises, the letters are concerned with women’s interest, while expressing confidence in the intellectual potential of both elite and non-elite women, making a strong case for women’s knowledge based on lived experience.