I don't know exactly what Liselotte's talking about, but I know of a relevant passage from Horowski, about how James II's son (future "James III" to Jacobites and father of BPC) almost died. Remember that he's the "warming pan baby," i.e. everyone wants to believe that he's not really the son of James and his wife.
A cynical contemporary wrote that the people would not believe in the authenticity of this child unless he died, and for a horrible few weeks it seemed as if the hypothesis might be put to the test. The king's personal physicians had just found out that milk was extremely dangerous for babies and had to be replaced with a combination of bread soup and sweet white wine, which was then labeled "Dr. Goddard's Drops" - a product made from sal ammoniac, dried snakes and a hanged man's skull. Only after the intervention of the Pope, Louis XIV and the Queen did the well-meaning and unsuspecting doctors finally agree to prescribe the milk of a well-born woman for the month-and-a-half-year-old prince (that the Queen could breastfeed herself, would not have occurred to anyone) before they then had to agree to the replacement of this lady by the evidently more competent wife of a tiler.
Now, judging by Louis XIV's reaction, this is *not* what they were doing at the French court, but it does tell you something about the state of medicine and royal babies at the time. Never underestimate 18th century medical incompetence!
(I endorse your time machine and encourage you to yell at doctors galore, and the people who listen to them!)
On that note, reminder that "milk is actually bad for babies!" was a story evidently still making the rounds in the 1780s because that's what non-royal, non-noble Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart believes when becoming a Dad according to his letters to Leopold, and he has to be collectively talked out of his idea of child nourishment by his wife and mother-in-law.
and had to be replaced with a combination of bread soup and sweet white wine, which was then labeled "Dr. Goddard's Drops" - a product made from sal ammoniac, dried snakes and a hanged man's skull.
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Re: Bourbon Brothers
A cynical contemporary wrote that the people would not believe in the authenticity of this child unless he died, and for a horrible few weeks it seemed as if the hypothesis might be put to the test. The king's personal physicians had just found out that milk was extremely dangerous for babies and had to be replaced with a combination of bread soup and sweet white wine, which was then labeled "Dr. Goddard's Drops" - a product made from sal ammoniac, dried snakes and a hanged man's skull. Only after the intervention of the Pope, Louis XIV and the Queen did the well-meaning and unsuspecting doctors finally agree to prescribe the milk of a well-born woman for the month-and-a-half-year-old prince (that the Queen could breastfeed herself, would not have occurred to anyone) before they then had to agree to the replacement of this lady by the evidently more competent wife of a tiler.
Now, judging by Louis XIV's reaction, this is *not* what they were doing at the French court, but it does tell you something about the state of medicine and royal babies at the time. Never underestimate 18th century medical incompetence!
(I endorse your time machine and encourage you to yell at doctors galore, and the people who listen to them!)
Re: Bourbon Brothers
Re: Bourbon Brothers
AGH!