Erotic lactation

Beachcombing has been wasting his summer looking at Early Modern diet fads. Several have appealed to him, but certainly the one that clamoured most urgently for his attention was the belief that human breast milk was a healthy addition to the adult diet. Platina [fifteenth-century Italian Renaissance scholar] specifies choosing a healthy, young, and beautiful woman of tempered complexion; naturally the milk was to be imbibed directly from the source. Perhaps because of these overtones there are surprisingly few references in contemporary sources to adults hiring out a wet nurse for their own use. One indirect source is the picture that heads the present piece where Alonso Cano obit , Spain has the BVM lactating St Bernard at a distance, presumably with the milk of wisdom!