Sir: Dr Linklater in his interesting article on the decline
and fall of the breast (September 8) does not tell us why our women now have stopped breast-feeding their babies. Why are there now so many unwanted babies? Why do we hear so much about abortions and contraception? Because many of our women now are ' liberated,' liberated from the grip of the collective unconscious or the herd instinct that makes them breast-feed and breed for the health -and preservation of the herd. Roman ladies about 130 AD stopped breast-feeding their babies. Aulus Gelius had something to tell us about them in his Attic Nights. Things were quite different in the heyday of the Roman Empire. Cornelia Gracchl, left a widow with twelve children, and asked by some visitors to show them her jewels, brought out all her children. These are my jewels, she told them.
R. F. Divecha 10 Sherbourne Road, Hove, Sussex
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