Piping the Milk

Rome's Hospital of the Holy Ghost, one of Europe's oldest, is so full of medical antiquities that for centuries nobody paid much attention to a charming fresco in the administration building. Painted about 1550 by the Zucchi brothers, minor artists of the Raphael school, it shows a group of wet nurses feeding foundling children, while in one corner of the scene a plump, placid musician plays a ciaramella or shawm, a cousin of the oboe. This week the hospital's archivist, Professor Pietro de Angelis, was getting ready to publish a startling explanation of the musician's presence: he was there to stimulate the flow of milk.

Working back through the hospital's records, De Angelis found many references to the "beneficial influence of soft and melodious music on the flow of mothers' milk." A 13th Century miniature showed players wearing costumes and carrying bagpipes* marked with the hospital's emblem. These, De Angelis concluded, were used to make lactogenic music until the shawm replaced the bagpipe.

Besides stimulating the wet nurses' production, the music had another purpose, says De Angelis. As a result of their early conditioning, the foundlings soon developed musical aptitudes which won them places in papal choirs. One thing De Angelis cannot explain: why or when the hospital abandoned a practice which put it centuries ahead of the medical profession in the use of musical therapy.

*Not to be confused with the milk-curdling Scottish pipes. The medieval one-cane Italian pipe had not so shrill a timbre.

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