Wet Nurses

During the eighteenth century, in europe, wet nurses were so in demand that governments had to establish bureaus where they could register and live until they were needed. They preferred brunettes to blonds or redheads because their milk was said to be 'more nutritious' The whole process came to be heavily regulated. Wet nurses were required to undergo regular health exams; forbidden from nursing more than one infant at a time. There are records of people using animals milk to feed human infants as far back as two thousandb c. And we've been doing this much further back than the 17 hundreds.