Justus von Liebig and the World Before Infant Formula

In 1864, organic chemist and pharmacist Justus von Liebig was faced with a problem that was both personal and tangential to his area of study. Liebig, a father of five children, was not a stranger to the early needs of infants. However, it was his daughter and granddaughter who motivated to develop infant formula. It was Liebig’s daughter Joanna who had difficulty producing milk, and in turn his granddaughter Carolina struggled to thrive.

Starting from the time we are born, hunger, and in turn nutrition are essential for anyone to thrive. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a farmer, a teacher, a mechanic, or, in this case, one of the most famous chemists in Europe. If a child isn’t getting enough to eat, the question becomes remarkably simple: What can I do?

For Justus von Liebig, himself a father of five, it was his granddaughter who sparked the question “what can I do?”

Liebig’s grandaughter, Carolina was born to his daughter Johanna in 1864. Soon after birth Carolina’s ability to eat became worrisome, as Johanna struggled with milk production.

Today Johanna would have had far more options to help feed Carolina. These options are found in infant formula , families facing that situation have options. There are infant formulas which are supported by over a century of nutritional research, pediatric specialists, and lactation consultants. In fact, at this very moment your pharmacy shelves stocked with products designed specifically for infant feeding.

In the middle of the nineteenth century, things looked very different. And so a grandfather did what grandfathers have always done when someone they love is in trouble. He tried to help.

Before Infant Formula

For most of human history, feeding a baby was straightforward, at least in theory it was a child’s mother that breastfed her child. Historically, when that wasn’t possible (and in some eras fashionable) women turned to other women for help. The women who assisted mothers are often called wet nurses, a role that has been documented as far back as 1550 BC in the Ebers Papyrus. Wet nurses are women who breastfed other people’s children alongside their own, at times this provided an income for the wet nurse as well.

What do you do when a wet nurse isn’t available? It might seem logical to explore other forms of milk, and why not? The types of milk available today extend past mamalian, just ask for some oat milk at your local coffee shop and you might be asked “flavored or unflavored?”

Milk experimentation has been a human venture for hungreds of years. In Liebig’s era, cow’s milk and goat’s milk were often fortified with  flour and sugar. However, the results varied from child to child.

Human milk and cow’s milk contain different amounts of protein, fat, and carbohydrates. That might seem obvious today, but at the time, it was still a relatively new idea. One of the people helping unlock those mysteries was Justus von Liebig.

How Justus von Liebig Invented Baby Formula

Liebig was not the sort of scientist content to stay inside a laboratory and admire theories. Today we might call him “a disruptor.” An expert who is able to step outside of their field and look at their specialty as a whole, and reimagine it. For Liebig, he was a disruptor of organic chemistry. The way we use labs today was influence d by Liebig, the fertilizers he helped develop improved agriculture across Europe, and his research into food preservation lead to several nutrion breakthroughs – one of which was infant formula.

Disruptors who are successful are often seen as the champions of progress, but it takes a very determined, even stubborn and opinionated type of person to challenge an entire area of science. Lieberg was certainly gifted with such virtues, and when his granddauther was in need he put them in action.

How Justus von Liebig Invented Baby Formula

The baby formula he eventually developed sounds unusual by modern standards. It combined cow’s milk, wheat flour, malt flour, and potassium bicarbonate. A recipe that he called “soup for babies.”

According to Liebig, the key ingredient was malt. Malt contains enzymes that help break starches down into simpler sugars. Liebig believed this would make the mixture easier for infants to digest.

The name “soup for babies” was straightforward and proved to pique the publics curiosity. Eventually pharmacists began to produce it in their labs, and eventually Liebig began to manufacture the formula and sell it across Europe and North America.

Baby Soup was a commercial success, not just because it had an intriguing name. It was a hit as it was the first formula that customers could rely on to be standardized, safe, and scientifically developed.

The Legacy of the First Commercial Baby Formula

The infant formula became a well known product, but it did not work well for all infants. Without a 100% success rate the formula came under scrutiny, which did ultimately find that the formula was better than nothing, it had a lot of room for improvement.

What makes Liebig’s story worth remembering isn’t that he created a perfect formula.

Liebig didn’t create a perfect formula for infants, but he is recognized for his ability to use his scientific skills to solve problems that extend across every population alive. In turn, he proved that food science could legitimatley improve infant nutrition and become a key support to care takers around the world.

Liebig wasn’t motivated by profits or personal achievement. He was motivated by his hungry grandaughter and his daughter Joanna. So he did what nearly other grandfather would, he went got to work.