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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鈥檛 breastfed lived to see their first birthday. Many were given 鈥減ap鈥�, 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 鈥� a powder comprising cow鈥檚 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)