Pacifier

A pacifier is a rubber, plastic, or silicone nipple substitute given to an infant or toddler to suckle upon between feedings to quiet its distress by satisfying the need to suck when it does not need to eat. Pacifiers normally have three parts: an elongated teat, a handle, and a mouth shield which prevents the child from swallowing or choking on it. Pacifiers have many different informal names: binky or wookie (American English), dummy (Australian English and British English), piece, paci, bo-bo, nookie, teething ring, device, sugar tit, teether, comforter, soother (Canadian English and Hiberno-English), and Dodie (Hiberno-English). Properly speaking, a teether is another device used for a different purpose. Pacifiers were mentioned for the first time in medical literature in 1473, being described by German physician Bartholomäus Metlinger in his book Kinderbüchlein, in later editions retitled Regiment der jungen Kinder ("Caring For Young Children"). In England in the 17th–19th centuries, a coral was a teething toy made of coral, ivory or bone, often mounted in silver as the handle of a rattle. A museum curator has suggested that these substances were used as "sympathetic magic" and that the animal bone could symbolize animal strength to help the child cope with pain. Pacifiers were a development of hard teething rings, but they were also a substitute for the softer sugar tits, sugar-teats, or sugar-rags which had been in use in 19th century America. A writer in 1873 described a "sugar-teat" made from "a small piece of old linen" with a "spoonful of rather sandy sugar in the center of it", "gathered ... up into a little ball" with a thread tied tightly around it. Rags with foodstuffs tied inside were also given to babies in many parts of Northern Europe and elsewhere. In some places a lump of meat or fat was tied in cloth, and sometimes the rag was moistened with brandy. German-speaking areas might use Lutschbeutel, cloth wrapped around sweetened bread or poppy-seeds.