Ideally, the baby would be nursed by another woman ("wet-nursed"). If that was impossible, babies were fed anything that people thought they could digest, from any vessel that people thought could convey the food to the child's mouth. Special "pap boats" were used for a long time, filled with gruel, milk, bread-and-milk, etc. Source: Yesterday's Children: The Antiques and History of Childcare, by Sally Keuill-Davies. Not long ago, I read in one volume of the Federal Writers' Project's Slave Narratives about a baby who couldn't digest breast milk. It was one of the slaves' job to catch a goat every time the baby needed to nurse, and hold the goat's feet to allow the baby to nurse directly from the goat! 0.O