PEDIATRICS Vol. 61 No. 3 March 1978, pp. 457
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THE SOLDIER-POET LUIGI TANSILLO'S POEM ABOUT THE IMPORTANCE OF BREAST-FEEDING

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

Luigi Tansillo (1510-1569) was not a physician but a soldier. His didactic pediatric poem La Balia (The Nurse) was discovered in manuscript in 1767, so that its publication had to wait more than two centuries after his death.1

Tansillo's poem, translated into English by William Roscoe in 1798, is an impassioned appeal for breast-feeding. This is an example of his plea-written more than 500 years ago-for mothers to nurse their infants.2

What fury hostile to the human kind

First led from Nature's path the female mind

Th' ingenuous sense by fashion's law represt

And to a babe denied its mother's breast?

O Crime! with herbs and drugs of essence high

The sacred fountains of the breast to dry

To seek a nurse ye trace the country round

At length the mercenary aid is found-

Some wretch of vulgar birth and conduct frail;

Some known offender, flagrant from the jail;

In mind an idiot, or depraved of life,

A shameless strumpet or impoverished wife.

Not half a mother, she, who pride denies

The streaming beverage to her infant's cries.