All down through history the consensus has been that the young infant is best nourished at its own mother's breast. But in the matter of infant feeding, as indeed in many other human affairs, practice has by no means always marched with precept. Very early in history, and in many civilizations, there were mothers who sought to escape from the method laid down by nature.
In the younger days of Egypt's glory there is more reason than not to believe that maternal nursing was the rule. Egyptian culture was matriarchal in type, and the child was held in high regard. Nor is it quite without significance, perhaps, that the divine Isis is "usually represented in the act of suckling the infant Osiris";1 a function thus practiced by a celestial mother should have been hallowed in the eyes of the daughters of earth.
But increasing wealth and perhaps the influx