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In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries congenital syphilis was a major cause of infant mortality in France but mercury, the preferred treatment for the disease, could not be safely given to infants. In the 1780s the Vaugirard hospital in Paris began to treat affected infants by giving mercury to wet nurses, who transmitted it to infants through their milk. Despite the highly contagious nature of syphilis and the dangerous side-effects of mercury, the practice of using healthy wet nurses to treat syphilitic infants spread throughout France and continued into the nineteenth century.

Syphilis, Congenital, hereditary, and infantile --- Syphilis --- Wet nurses --- Medical personnel --- Health care personnel --- Health care professionals --- Health manpower --- Health personnel --- Health professions --- Health sciences personnel --- Health services personnel --- Healthcare professionals --- Medical manpower --- Professional employees --- Child care workers --- Breastfeeding --- Treponemal pallidum infection --- Sexually transmitted diseases --- Treponematoses --- Communicable diseases in newborn infants --- Treatment --- Social aspects --- History. --- Patients --- Legal status, laws, etc. --- Malpractice --- Hospice de Vaugirard (Paris, France) --- Vaugirard hospital (Paris, France) --- Hôpital du Midi --- History of human medicine --- History of France --- anno 1700-1799 --- anno 1800-1899