PEDIATRICS Vol. 43 No. 4 April 1969, pp. 539
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INFLUENCE OF THE INFANT'S FOOD ON HIS CHARACTER ACCORDING TO DR. JOSEPH SIMMS WRITING IN 1891

T. E. C. Jr. M.D.

Until almost the beginning of this century, a commonly and widely accepted belief was that an infant imbibes with the breast milk the character of the nurse. Even as late as the 1890's there were physicians who vigorously supported this hypothesis. None was more convinced of this erroneous concept than Dr. Joseph Simms, who in 1891 wrote:

The child that sucks the milk of the mother who bore it will naturally take on the mother's moral characteristics; while the orphan, compelled to take in the milk of an animal, will reveal in its character some of those idiosyncracies peculiar to that animal. This is not a visionary statement; it is founded on fact, and can be testified to by those who have paid any attention to the subject. An illustration of what we mean was found in 1870 in the family of Captain P. M. Choutea, of Kansas City, Mo. In the captain's family there was a little girl, five years of age, who had been deprived of a mother's milk and nursed on the milk of a goat, and when she grew up and was able to run about, she gave unmistakable evidence of the truth of that law for which we contend. She had a strong and very unusual desire for climbing. She would mount rocks, fences, and go to the tops of houses, and, in fact, jump about in every respect like the animal whose milk she had sucked. Nor when in her climbing moods did she manifest any tokens of fear; and these peculiarities became apparent in her climbing moods did she had sucked.