Hygeia Nursing Bottle

Description:

Wide-mouthed, cylindrical glass nursing bottle with rubber nipple. Graduated in ounces; 6 oz.

First "Hygeia" nursing bottle as patented by William M. Decker of Kingston, New York, on June 19, 1894 (Patent No. 521,773) and manufactured around 1900. Decker’s patent claimed that his design embodied “a perfect sanitary feeding device for infants, which will obviate disease that results from want of proper assimilation of food, and that will permit a correct administration of food in a perfectly clean condition.” The simple cylindrical construction of the “cell” was inexpensive and easy to clean. The elastic cover/nipple, which was “substantially-similar to a mother’s breast and nipple,” could be turned inside out “so that all food particles may be washed from its inner side, and thus render the entire device sweet and clean, which is a prime essential for the preservation of health of the child fed from the said receptacle.”

This bottle along with three other Hygeia bottles manufactured in 1916, 1941, and 1948, were donated to the museum in 1953 by the Hygeia Nursing Bottle Company. The president of the company, W. M. Decker, son of the founder, offered the material to the museum after reading a newspaper article about a Smithsonian exhibit on the evolution of nursing bottles and nursing bottle patents.