Milk and hygiene in Eastern France: the ‘goutte de lait’ at Besançon and the ‘œuvre du bon lait’ at Bar-le-Duc (late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries)

Abstract

Abstract— Food security held a central place in the hygienist project to improve the quality of milk. While it may be difficult to grasp the question of milk and dairy products globally in hygienist discourse, this article proposes a focused study of two specific ‘œuvres de la goutte de lait’ (‘drop of milk’—the name given to specific social projects for milk quality) at Besançon and Bar-le-Duc in Eastern France. The ‘œuvre de la goutte de lait’ was an institution that sought to supply healthy milk to mothers who were unable to suckle their babies. This preoccupation with infant hygiene was allied to the development of pediatrics and childcare. Milk as a foodstuff was at the heart of the hygienist project of the turn of the twentieth century: on the one hand, it could carry tuberculosis, and was thus suspect; on the other, it provided an alternative to the problems of maternal breastfeeding. These projects helped contribute more broadly to the development of a municipal hygienics that was an essential characteristic of the emerging modern state in France.