Sugar tit

{{Short description|Type of baby pacifier}}

{{About|the baby accessory|the communities in the United States|Sugartit, Kentucky|and|Sugar Tit, South Carolina}}

Sugar tit is a folk name for a baby pacifier, or dummy, that was once commonly made and used in North America and Britain. It was made by placing a spoonful of sugar, or honey, in a small patch of clean cloth, then gathering the cloth around the sugar and twisting it to form a bulb. The bulb was then secured by twine or a rubber band. The baby's saliva would slowly dissolve the sugar in the bulb.

In use the exposed outfolded fabric could give the appearance of a flower in the baby's mouth. David Ransel quotes a Russian study by Dr. N. E. Kushev while discussing a similar home-made cloth-and-food pacifier called a soska (со́ска); there, the term "flower", as used colloquially by mothers, refers to a bloom of mold in the child's mouth caused by decay of the contents. David Ransel [https://books.google.com/books?id=LpUncmF-megC&dq=russian+soska+pacifier&pg=PA29 "Village Mothers: three generations of change in Russia and Tataria"], 28-29

As early as 1802 a German physician, Christian Struve, described the sugar tit as "one of the most revolting customs".{{Cite journal |doi = 10.1093/shm/8.2.231|title = Dummies and the Health of Hertfordshire Infants, 1911–1930|journal = Social History of Medicine|volume = 8|issue = 2|pages = 231–255|year = 1995|last1 = Gale|first1 = Catharine R.|last2 = Martyn|first2 = Christopher N.|pmid = 11639807}}