Между этикой и физиологией: кормилицы в российском обществе конца XIX — начала XX в.

Abstract

The article addresses a number of issues related to the profession of wet nurses in pre-Revolutionary Russia. This topic is particularly relevant in connection with the current discussion of the alienation of women’s reproductive function. According to infant care manuals, while choosing a wet nurse, doctors recommended that mothers consider not only physical aspects, but also ethical issues. However, in practice, the ethics receded into the background. Wet nurses were used in almost all families that had reached a certain financial and social status. Doctors’ recommendations were referred to justify the fact that mothers should not feed their own infants. Therefore, such recommendations served to justify an ethically questionable practice. The most serious medical problem was that wet nurses were distributors of syphilis. Many nurses started their work in orphanages where they contracted syphilis from infected foundling babies. As it was impossible to diagnose syphilis at the early stages, the infected wet nurse would become the carrier of the disease and, when hired by a family, infect the customer’s child. The article is based on the materials in the Odessa province.