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Tilted Cat Head
Administrator
Location: Manhattan, NY
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Quote:
Personal correspondence with Dr. Guonjon Guonason, retired obstetrician. Reykjavik, May 1993.
The promotion of breastfeeding took different forms according to the historical context. In Renaissance art, the countless paintings of Virgin Mary nursing the infant Jesus were indirect, non-rational and effective ways to promote breastfeeding. The power of religious imagery can help to interpret an intriguing phenomenon that happened in Iceland, a country where mothers did not breastfeed their children for two or three centuries (Hastrup, 1992; Personal correspondence with Dr. Guonjon Guonason, 1993). Until the Reformation, the Virgin Mary had a supremely important position in Icelandic popular religious practice, and during the purification rite after childbirth, the women would pray to Mary in their local churches. Thus, in Iceland, the destruction of the image of Mary may contribute to explain the sudden en masse abandonment of breastfeeding.
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From your Dr. Odent link, I contacted my midwife friend in Iceland to inquire what she knows of this history. I cannot find any documentation to support Guonason's assertations, but to cite personal correspondence that doesn't have any historical data to corroborate it is to espouse hearsay.
abaya, can you shed any light on this historical fact as true or untrue?
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