At the end of her best-selling Book of Household Management (1861), Isabella Beeton (1836-1865) included a section titled "The Rearing and Management of Children, and Diseases of Infancy and Childhood." By the nineteenth century, the middle class assumed that the truly caring and moral mother would breast-feed her child instead of sending it to a wet nurse Like her contemporaries, Beeton praised the soothing effects of beer on infants, a food not recommended by modern medical practitioners

As Nature has placed in the bosom of the mother the natural food of her offspring, it must be self-evident to every reflecting woman, that it becomes her duty to study, as far as lies in her power, to keep that reservoir of nourishment in as pure and invigorating a condition as possible, for she must remember that the quantity is no proof...