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Stories

  • Article

Womb milk and the puzzle of the placenta

A human baby needs milk to survive – and this holds true even before it’s born. Joanna Wolfarth explores “womb milk”, as well as ancient and modern ideas about the placenta.

  • Article

Chemotherapy-day drawings

Undergoing treatment for bowel cancer, artist Clare Smith produced around 70 abstract drawings while sitting in the chemotherapy chair. She reflects on how creativity can bring respite in a crisis.

  • Article

The work of wet-nursing

Many of us know that in the past, babies were sometimes nourished by wet-nurses. But, perhaps surprisingly, the practice continues today – and the milk recipients are not only babies.

  • Article

Sharing breastmilk with parents

Alev Scott donated her frozen breastmilk to a hospital milk bank, but she was curious about other routes. Here she explores commercial operations and informal private arrangements.

All stories (13)

Images

  • Surgical instruments and patients with diseases of the breast. Engraving with etching by R. Parr.
  • Chinese woodcut: Disease location: breast abscess
  • A woman of Martinique with her left breast greatly enlarged by disease. Photograph.
  • A breast with an area of skin disease. Coloured stipple engraving by S. Tresca after Moreau-Valvile, c. 1806.
  • A diseased female breast. Watercolour.
  • A diseased female breast. Watercolour, 1824.
  • Coloured illustration of female breast diseased with Syphilis.
  • Diseased skin on the face of a girl suffering from molluscum contagiosum, shown beside a diseased breast, with two details below showing sebaceous follicles and cells as seen under a microscope. Chromolithograph by E. Burgess (?), 1850/1880?.
  • Uganda: a Lango woman with diseased skin holding a baby; she has applied a leaf as a dressing to her swollen left breast. Photograph by Cecil John Hackett, ca. 1937.
  • Helianthus annuus Greene Asteraceae. Sunflower, Marigold of Peru, Floure of the Sun. Distribution: Peru and Mexico. It was much recommended by Gerard (1633) who advises that the buds, covered in flour, boiled, and eaten with 'butter, vinegar and pepper, far surpass artichokes in procuring bodily lust’. Sadly, today only the seeds of sunflower are consumed, as the source of sunflower seed oil used in cooking. It contains mono and polyunsaturated fats, linoleic acid and oleic acid, and is low in saturated fats. As such it was thought to lower cholesterol and so the risk of heart disease, but it may increase the risk of breast and prostatic cancer. However a recent report BMJ2013
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Catalogue

All works (436)