Book review: Ranjana Saha,Modern Maternities: Medical Advice about Breastfeeding in Colonial Calcutta

This fascinating study discusses and analyses medical opinions about breastfeeding and neonatal care, as well as discourses in medical print media about scientific and modern maternities in colonial Calcutta. Saha investigates the socially constructed discourses about breastfeeding experiences, wet nursing, artificial feeding, lactation and associated problems. Examining the period between the 1830s and 1940s, she argues that guidelines about breastfeeding and artificial feeding of infants learned by mothers under medical supervision were imbued with moralising and scientific rhetoric aimed at remodelling maternal and infant welfare (p. 2). Clock time in both the inner and outer spaces of colonial Calcutta was used to create a discourse about medicalised self-discipline in Bengali maternal and infant care manuals. Saha adopts a Foucauldian approach using various English and Bengali periodicals, handbooks published during the British colonial period, archival documents and quasi-governmental reports to go beyond the ‘Said-inflected critique of colonial power/knowledge’ (p. 13).

Chapter 1 is divided into three sections, titled ‘Milk, Maternities and Manliness’, ‘Governing Ideas: Dais, Memsahibs and Medicine’ and ‘Artificial Foods versus Wet Nursing’. The discussion problematises, analyses and reinterprets the governing assumption that the tropical environment ruined the nursing capacities of memsahibs. Chapter 2 scrutinises the medical advice on breastfeeding and the processes of the medicalisation of childbirth, midwifery and wet nursing. The third chapter focuses on a discussion about the glorification, pathologisation and medicalisation of Indian mothers and their love in the medical literature. Situating breastfeeding of infants in the broader context of discussions on the female-maternal body, sexuality, conjugality, early motherhood and nutrition, Chapter 4 examines the problems of breastfeeding in early motherhood against the canvas of the age of consent debates in colonial Bengal.

The last chapter focuses on the 1920 Health and Child Welfare Exhibition in colonial Calcutta. Saha summarises how medical handbooks tropicalised wet nurses because of their abundant milk supply (p. 28) and how the discourse about artificial food versus wet nursing was set up. Touching on the issue of ‘tropical climate’, she shows how the British connected it with the degeneration of European women’s health. This work also examines de-humanising aspects of wet nursing such as bodily examination that forced separation of the mother from her children. Saha unearths how baby food and maternity health product manufacturers attempted to show that their medicines were effective for every race, using tactics that framed their products within Indian cultural patterns. For instance, advertisements portrayed women in a sari with their children or used Sanskrit phrases to expand their markets.

The book investigates everyday problems like over-nursing or constant breastfeeding to further explore the notions of scientific motherhood and topics of clean versus dirty midwifery (p. 69). Saha also provides insightful information regarding the capacity of immature mothers for childbirth and lactation, as well as examining popular notions on its impact on the efficiency of nation and race. This discussion critically engages with the Child Welfare Exhibition of Calcutta of 1920 (p. 189) to explain the content of lectures related to clean midwifery and scientific motherhood. Saha argues that the mother and child were placed under medical surveillance as part of a civilising mission (p. 109).

This book on maternal and infant care fills a gap in scholarly research in the social history of medicine. Through this work, Saha showcases the histories of motherhood and childbearing by investigating the impact of sociopolitical forces on their construction. Throughout the book, she elaborates on how breastfeeding was linked to tradition, modernity, science and hygiene and critiques the ritual purity of caste structure and the ‘pure–impure’ dilemma of childbirth. Analysing the then prevalent perceptions on motherhood and breastfeeding in colonial Calcutta, she delves into crucial debates on climate, tropics, heat, bodily composition, temperament of wet nurse(s) and medicine. Saha also touches upon issues like the politics of breastfeeding within a household and the bond between an employer and a servant (pp. 86–95). The book provides a detailed elaboration of the world of midwives (dais) (pp. 71–83), about how they were trained, the hurdles they faced in their training, and the implications of caste in this profession. The question of evil practices associated with breastfeeding, along with female infanticide, has also been highlighted. One of the main features of this book is the clarity of its source descriptions and analysis. Several pictures in the book help readers to understand Saha’s arguments with more clarity. Her work also helps readers connect prevalent discussions in Bengali texts on motherhood and breastfeeding with discourses about regeneration and conceptualisation of the nation as ‘mother’. This book will remain important for its insights into the complex web of motherhood, neonatal care and breastfeeding during colonial times.