Introduction:

the current continuity of publications on abandoned children during the Spanish Enlightenment, from the same perspectives of social control that were established at the end of the 20th century, undermines the efforts of some Enlightenment scholars to find artificial nutrition alternatives to breastfeeding through wet nurses.

Aim:

to analyse the nutritional trials carried out by Joaquín Xavier Úriz (1747-1829) in the Pamplona foundling home.

Method:

review, analysis and interpretation of his work "Causas prácticas de la muerte de los niños expósitos en sus primeros años" , published in 1801.

Results:

after justifying its necessity, setting out objectives, and designing a controlled experiment, he carried out two trials with infants, one with healthy children using rice water supplements to the wet-nurse's milk and the other with sick children using mixed goat and wet-nurse breastfeeding. Both were initially conducted with one and two subjects, respectively, to be extended after good results to a larger, non-randomised sample (12 subjects in the case of sick children). Although the initial results were inconclusive, a decrease in subsequent infant mortality was noted.

Conclusions:

the trials are based on the application of a more appreciable scientific method than in didactic texts by more relevant authors, as in the case of Iberti. The prevailing utilitarianism does not hide the value given to the life of the foundling over any other, Úriz being a clear example of the exceptions to the predominantly punitive approach of historiography. The subsequent decline in infant mortality suggests the possibility of a successful cause-effect of the trials.

        · abstract in Spanish     · text in Spanish     · Spanish ( pdf )