Omniana/Volume 1/Ablactation—as our old Dictionaries call it
112. Ablactation... as our old Dictionaries call it.
Old Beuther, in calculating the number of years necessary for replenishing the world after the Deluge, allows two years for suckling a child. This therefore must have been the customary time of lactation in Spain. The Spaniards perhaps received it from the Moors, for Mahommed enjoins mothers to give their infants the breast during two compleat years, if they will take it so long. Immediately after laying down this law, the Koran with its usual inconsistency, gives full permission to any body to break it.
King Joam III. of Portugal was not weaned till he was three years and a half old, and then it was by an act of his own princely pleasure. In that same age it was a common custom in Germany to wean infants after the first month, feed them with cows-milk through a wooden tube, and administer the warm bath every third day.