安抚奶嘴是谁发明的？
Who Made That Pacifier?

By the time Christian W. Meinecke applied for a patent for “a new and original Design for a Baby Comforter” in 1901, people had been giving babies soothing objects to suck on for centuries: knotted rags dipped in water or honey, wooden beads or “gum sticks” made of stone, bone or coral. But nothing would ever be quite as popular as the pacifier.

在克里斯蒂安·W·迈内克(Christian W. Meinecke)于1901年为“一款全新的婴儿安抚器原创设计”申请专利之前，人们给婴儿吮吸安抚物品已有几个世纪的历史：蘸了水或蜜的打结的破布，木珠子或用石头、骨头或珊瑚做成的“胶棒”。但是都不如安抚奶嘴这么受欢迎。

Meinecke was a Manhattan druggist who patented a number of alarming-sounding medical devices, including a “sputum cup and holder” and a “self-retaining rectal tube.”

迈内克是曼哈顿的一个药剂师，他申请了一些听起来很吓人的医疗器械专利，包括“痰杯及杯架”和“自固定肛管”。

Little about him is known today, other than that he had an ex-wife who was occasionally arrested for making a scene at his Greenwich Street drugstore. His Baby Comforter consisted of an India rubber nipple attached to a disk-shaped shield that kept the nipple from being swallowed by a vigorously sucking infant. Other inventors soon patented variations, which included the addition of a ring that could be used to yank the pacifier from a baby’s mouth, but they all retained the basic nipple-and-shield configuration that persists today. Back then, the rubber nipples were processed with sulfur, which left them foul-smelling. Some were also tinted white, a process that tainted them with lead. The shields were made of bone, ivory or aluminum.

如今我们对他知之甚少，只知道他的前妻偶尔在他位于格林威治街的药店大吵大闹而曾经被捕。他设计的婴儿安抚器是把一个印度橡胶奶嘴装在一个圆盘状的护盾上，后者是为了防止奶嘴被用力吸吮的婴儿将其吞咽。其他发明者很快为一些大同小异的安抚奶嘴申请了专利，比如加上一个拉环，方便把奶嘴从婴儿口里拔出来，但是它们都保留了流传至今的奶嘴加护盾的基本构造。当时的橡胶奶嘴用硫磺处理过，有一股臭味。有些还用铅染成白色。护盾是用骨头、象牙或铝做成的。

Critics were soon excoriating the invention even as eager mothers adopted it. An outraged 1909 letter to the editor of The New York Times railed against the “villainous contrivance,” which was said to thicken the tongue and deform the mouth. Other ills attributed to the pacifier included scoliosis, the spread of disease and a lifetime of self-abuse. “Infants who persist in the habit of sucking always become masturbators,” a prominent New York pediatrician asserted in 1908.

虽然急切的妈妈们都采用了它，但批评家们很快开始严厉指责这项发明。1909年写给《纽约时报》编辑的一封愤慨的信痛骂了这项“罪恶的发明”，说它会使舌头变厚，嘴巴变形。安抚奶嘴的其他罪名包括脊柱侧弯，疾病传播和终身自慰。“养成吮吸习惯的婴儿长大后一定会手淫，”纽约的一位著名的儿科医生1908年宣称。

Despite these warnings, sales of the pacifier continued to grow. Latex and silicone nipples replaced the India rubber ones; plastic substituted for the bone and ivory shields and rings. By the 1940s, one company, Binky Baby Products of New York, had sold so many pacifiers that the brand would become a generic term for the thing itself. (The trademark is now owned by Playtex.)

尽管有这些警告，安抚奶嘴的销售依然在增长。乳胶和硅胶奶嘴代替了印度橡胶奶嘴，塑料代替骨头和象牙做护盾和拉环。20世纪40年代，纽约宾奇婴儿用品公司(Binky Baby Products of New York)卖了很多安抚奶嘴，这个品牌名变成了这个物品的通用名（这个商标现在归倍儿乐[Playtex]公司所有）。

Still, experts continued to object. Masturbation was no longer the worry — now pediatricians and breast-feeding advocates warned that pacifiers caused “nipple confusion” and would render babies unable to nurse. Recent research has debunked this concern, finding that pacifiers may actually help with breast-feeding, but parents weren’t much deterred by the experts, anyway. More than 75 percent of Western babies now use a pacifier. As one medical historian noted in 1971, “The experience of the ignorant has routed the wisdom of the learned.”

不过，专家们仍然持反对立场。手淫不再是他们担心的问题——现在儿科医生和主张母乳喂养的人警告说，安抚奶嘴会导致“乳头混淆”，致使婴儿不会吮吸母乳。最近的研究驳斥了这种担忧，发现安抚奶嘴实际上可能有利于母乳喂养，但是不管怎样专家们都没能拦住父母们。如今在西方国家，超过75%的婴儿使用安抚奶嘴。就像一位医学史学家1971年指出的，“无知者的经验击垮了有学问的人的智慧。”

本文最初发表于2014年6月22日。

翻译：王相宜