Born in 1945, I was a bottle baby. There were no commercial formula products.

[MineralMan]

107. Oh, dear. You know, I said nothing about polio.

That is a disease. My brother-in-law had it. I lined up in 1955 for the Salk shot, along with everyone in my grammar school.

The fact is that in the 40s and 50s, most infants were fed an evaporated milk formula, much like the recipe I posted in the opening post. That image was the front of a pamphlet handed to a new mother by her doctor. The rest of it described the process of preparing that formula to prevent contamination and eliminate bacteria. I didn't post the instruction pages.

During those years, very few women breastfed their babies. It just "wasn't done." So, that type of home-made formula was what nourished most infants in that period. Commercial formulas weren't that popular with new mothers at that time, and formulas like that one were recommended by doctors to their patients.

Breastfeeding was better, of course. However, for mothers who followed the instructions for sterilization and didn't cut any corners generally had healthy babies on that formula. The babies still got sick sometimes. The babies and later children got the childhood illnesses. I can't tell you how excited parents were when the polio vaccine became available. There was a real panic about polio around 1950. I was 5 years old then, and remember getting rushed to the hospital because I had an upset stomach. My mother was afraid I had polio. I didn't, of course, but some kids got polio.

We're not talking about a deadly virus. We're talking about infant formula. The thing I posted came from a doctor in 1960. I didn't invent it, but I got something virtually identical as my formula. And here I still am, soon to be 77 years old. Babies are apparently pretty sturdy, for the most part.