#author: william potts dewees

[glossahistorica]

RAISIN-SKINS.

RAISIN-SKINS.—The skins of raisins are utterly indigestible. A child recently died at Barton from convulsions induced by eating raisins. Dr. Dewees mentions the death of three children from the same cause, and remarks that there is no stomach, unless it be that of the ostrich, that can master the skin of the raisin.

The Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine, August 1855, p.159. [x]

See also: "The Rind of Fruit Indigestible", Scientific American Magazine Vol. 13 No. 22 (February 1858), p.171, although they had previously (in 1852) taken "Dr Devees" to task according to The Old Foodie:

Skins of Raisins. We see it stated in some papers, that Dr Devees, of Boston, has said that raisin skins are indigestible, and that nothing but the stomach of an ostrich can master them. He mentions the deaths of three children, caused by skins of raisins not digesting in their stomachs. Well, Dr. Devees, what about their digestibility when cooked? Raisins are fruit, which from time immemorial, have been used as a nourishing and healthy food by all Orientals.

(Given that this is the first appearance of language like this on this blog, I would like to make it clear that whilst I don't condone nor enjoy language like "Orientals", I will be leaving it intact for context.)

And the claim from Dr Dewees repeated earlier in 1852 in the Wabash Express, Vol. 11, No. 10, Terre Haute, Vigo County, 18 February 1852.

And since you were so patient to read all these words on raisins, here is Dr William Potts Dewees making his claim, "Of Dried Fruits", in A treatise on the physical and medical treatment of children, p.199, this edition published 1853.

[robbialy]

From • @lostinhistorypics This photo was taken in 1958, in a small town in the Canary Islands. The original caption read: “Goat suckling a child in 1958, El Mojon, Teguise, Lanzarote.” Throughout history, goats have been used as wet nurses when the mother could not produce milk or hiring a human wet nurse was too expensive. In the 16th century, many mothers rejected wet nurses for fear of infecting their newborn with syphilis. Pierre Brouzet, who was a physician to King Louis the XV, remarked that “some peasants who have no other nurses but ewes, and these peasants were as strong and vigorous as others.” In the 1976 book, “American Folk Medicine: A Symposium,” author Wayland D. Hand discusses the phenomenon in more detail: “Because milk does not keep well once it is separated from the animal and because the act of suckling was believed to aid digestion in infancy, medical writers beginning in the eighteenth century began to advocate nursing children directly at the udders of goats. Goats were easier to obtain and cheaper than human wet nurses; they were safer from disease and were better in many other respects. Although cows’ milk was almost exclusively used in early American infant feeding, William Potts Dewees, who wrote the first American pediatric treatise in 1825, called attention to animal milks and pointed out that the English praised asses’ milk; nevertheless, he preferred milk of goats. He then compared the chemical constituents of milk from cows, women, goats, asses, sheep, and mares. In 1816, Conrad A. Zwierlein, after listening to women at a fashionable European resort deploring their difficulties with wet nurses, wrote a book called, ‘The Goat as the Best and Most Agreeable Wet Nurse,’ which he dedicated to vain and coquettish women, as well as to sick, tender, and weak ones. Goat feeding then became very popular for a while until it was attacked on various grounds and fell into disfavor. In 1879, it was revived in the children’s hospitals of Paris, especially for syphilitic infants.” https://www.instagram.com/p/CfXegfnjDDQuXzLjHLJs-SavbXCB-YLCJMOjR40/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=