Infant Formula

50 Things That Made the Modern Economy

BBC

Business

4.8 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 10 June 2017

⏱️ 9 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Not every baby has a mother who can breastfeed. Indeed, not every baby has a mother. In the early 1800s, only two in three babies who weren’t breastfed lived to see their first birthday. Many were given “pap”, a bread-and-water mush, from hard-to-clean receptacles that teemed with bacteria. But in 1865 Justus von Liebig invented Soluble Food for Babies – a powder comprising cow’s milk, wheat flour, malt flour and potassium bicarbonate. It was the first commercial substitute for breastmilk and, as Tim Harford explains, it has helped shape the modern workplace. Editors: Richard Knight and Richard Vadon Producer: Ben Crighton (Image: Baby lying down drinking from bottle, Credit: Lopolo/Shutterstock)

Transcript

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0:00.0	50 Things That Made The Modern Economy With Tim Harford
0:20.4	It sounded like cannon fire.
0:22.4	But where was it coming from?
0:25.2	The ship of the British East India Company was docked at Macassar on the Indian island of Sulawesi.
0:33.2	Its commander gave the order to set sail and hunt them down.
0:37.2	Hundreds of kilometres away on another Indian island, Java.
0:42.2	Soldiers in Yogyakata heard the cannon noises too.
0:46.2	Their commander assumed the nearest town was under attack.
0:49.2	He marched his men there at once.
0:51.2	But they found no cannons.
0:53.2	Just other people wondering what the noise was.
0:56.2	Three days later, the Benares still hadn't found any pirates.
1:01.2	What they'd heard was the eruption of a volcano called Mount Tambora.
1:08.2	When you consider that Mount Tambora is a thousand odd kilometres from Yogyakata,
1:13.2	it's hard to imagine how terrifying the explosions must have been up close.
1:19.2	A cocktail of toxic gas and liquefied rock roared down the volcano's slopes at the speed of a hurricane.
1:26.2	It killed thousands.
1:29.2	Mount Tambora was left 4,000 feet shorter than before.
1:37.2	The year was 1815.
1:40.2	Slowly, have asked cloud of volcanic ash drifted across the northern hemisphere, blocking the sun.
1:47.2	In Europe, 1816 became the year without a summer.
1:52.2	Crops failed. Desperate people ate rats, cats and grass.
	...

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