HEALTH COLUMN.

Otago Witness, Issue 3197, 23 June 1915, Page 73

HEALTH COLUMN.

MILK: ITS USE AND ABUSE. It is a remarkable and interesting fact that Nature supplies only a single article purely as food; that is milk. Everything else we, on other animals, consume for nourishment is placed here for some other purpose in the first instance; and not to bo devoured by creatures who seek their prey, animal or vegetable, in other created beings or things weaker than themselves. On inquiry, we are still further struck by the perfection—rising infinitely superior to all the potty inventions of man —with which Nature sots out to manufacture anything she needs, for milk is the most perfect of nutrient substances, furnishing every single constituent that is required for nutrition by the body of the animal consuming it. Purity Essential.— As milk is a perfect food, and is placed before us as sucli by Mother Nature, so we should always take special hoed not to tamper with her in any way, but always sedulously seek to obtain and to maintain it in its original pristine purity. I am afraid that principle is not always, or even frequently, borne in mind by doctors, who frequently tell you to boil it, or in some way to sophisticate it. That is often—l will not say always—a grand mistake. For if you boil milk you certainly are enabled to preserve it longer without decomposition—particularly in hot weather—than if you had left it severely alone. But the price of this is considerable, and Lias always to be paid—is, as a matter of fact, very commonly far too high a price to be paid at all by the infant or the invalid. Boiling, or oven the milder process known as pasteurisation, which consists in exposing for some hours to a high temperature under the boiling point, effects subtle chemical and other changes in the milk which render it far less digestible than it is normally. That, I need hardly say, is a very consideration for the young child, or even for the adult whose digestive powers are weak. Hence, when either of these two is in question, every effort should bo made to give milk not artificially heated or in anyway changed from the condition in which Nature has bestowed it on us. —Cleanliness in All Things.— Cleanliness is said to rank next to godliness ; ' and, if that were anywhere literally true, it surely would bo so in our handling of the cow’s milk, which is such a necessary article of diet for each and all of us. Perfect people are said to be sensitive —so at least I imagine; but it has never fallen to my lot to meet anybody who was not a very long way from perfection. And in the same way this perfect food of ours, milk, is extremely susceptible to the slightest contamination by disease-products, by dirty hands or dirty people, by foulness or foul practices in any shape. Then it proves the vehicle of diseases innumerable. I have known it convey scarlatina, when someone suffering, or who had recently suffered from that malady, had milked the cow or even handled the milk pails. Typhoid Fever, —

So again, typhoid fever, about which so much has lately been said in reference to the armies in the field, is commonly spread by polluted milk—that is to say; by milk containing some of the drinking water which has become infected by the discharges from patients. The almost invariable source of typhoid epidemics—now happily far less common than they were 30 years ago —is the latter. We need not do more than mention typhus, diphtheria, smallpox, measles, cholera, etc., as in the same category of maladies easily diffused to a large number of people by any infraction of the principle of absolute cleanliness in the milk supply. It is sufficient to remark that no pains, individual or collective, can bo too great to ensure purity. It ought to be almost a hanging matter to milk a cow with dirty hands, or to wash out a milk pail with dirty ■water.

For every species .the natural article is best, wherever that is procurable, and other things are equal. Cow’s milk is not a complete and all-round substitute for human milk; 'though It commonly has to stand in as such, and is nearly the best procurable. But every mother should endeavour, in the first place, to be physically sound and healthy during the lactation period; secondly, to nurse her baby through 10 months, perhaps a year. Alter the twelvemonth harm may be done. Only when the mother’s _ health fails should there bo resort to artificial feeding during the first few months of an infant’s life. Then the cow’s milk has to be diluted with water, which should always be taken from the purest available sources, and well boiled as well as filtered. One part milk to two of water for the first three months; then equal parts of each; at six months (and not before), the undiluted milk. The Abuse of MilkMany good, people entertain the idea that, milk being a highly nutritious article of ‘diet, the more they drink the better. And sometimes they thus consume what really does them a great deal of harm. It is not every adult who can really digest milk at all; though the majority of us can do so in moderation. With some it profoundly disagrees, even in small quantity. And it cannot bo too emphatically remembered that it is not what we swallow, hut what we actually digest when it Iras been swallowed that actually nourishes. When milk is taken in quantity and not digested, its sets up constipation, and physical constipation may bo described with fair accuracy as the root of almost all hod dy ills you like to name. Many persons would have far better health enjoy now if they did not consume far more milk than their organs will digest. - Buttermilk—Sour Milk.— I suppose every year many thousands of gallons of milk are thrown away because it is sour, or likely to become so. I have heard of terrible waste of perfectly sound milk at largo hospitals. The nurses pour it down the sink at night because they say it will bo sour by morning. This is atrocious, almost criminal waste. Sour milk is good food —excellent for anyone who B not gouty to the Utter it U uoUoh. And buttermilk is, ns_ everyone knows, especially recommended in'the treatment of consumptives. Directly we swallow fresh milk ft is curdled by the gastric Juice —the first stag® of digestion. Sour milk is only milk which has undergone tin’s first and necessary stage before being swallowed. In some countries people have learnt not to drink the milk at all until it is sour.