MILK AS A MEANS OF SUICIDE.
It is remarkable says "The Argonaut " that so mild end intrinsically harmless a beverage as milk should be so frequently chosen as a means of exit into the other world. Yet at this summer season the lethal effects of milk seem to be much underrated. For example, we read in the despatches from San Andreas that " a prominent young man of Calaweras County died here to-day as a result of eating cherries and drinking milk." This is a slight variant from the usual combination. Probably the most deadly is pickles and milk. Strawberries and milk are only mildly toxic ( with young and hardy stomachs they aire often partially .digested; with older ones they frequently cause nothing more than eructative dyspepsia, or at worst hives, nettle rash, urticaria or summer complaint, therefore those who are fond of this combination rarely abstain in the face of these comparatively trifling ailments. Next to pickles and milk, probably the most deadly form in which the innocent fluid can be made to figure is tbe cheap icecream combination. Despite the toughness of juvenile viscera, milk in the icecream form, if judiciously adfministered, has been known to lay out in intestinal kinks many scores of children at Sunday school picnics. With their elders the combination is not infrequently fatal. Of course it requires much care to make milk so deadly. In fact, with careless mixing this kind of icecream may be taken with comparative impunity, or only a slight illness. When it is prepared with attention to the proper septic and toxio conditions however, milk in this form may be looked upon as practically certain death ; it would be invaluable as am apparently innocent means of hurrying off rioh uncles, tardy spinster aunts, «&d other rich persons who linger superfluous on life's stage. In its most potent form, when the innocent milk has become merely a culture bed for billions of icecream ptomaines, the doctors call the mixture " tyrotoxicon." This name is imposing and scientific sounding, and doubtless gives a certain chastened satisfaction to the mourners — much more than would plain- iniljfe.-^. To return to our original remark— it is extraordinary what pains people, take to render deadly this harmless beverage. Even if the cow be sound, they will expose the milk to all manner of impurities — including typhoid geo-ms — before they put it inside of them. Even if it be perfectly pure they take it at temperatures and under conditions that are * '"y^se, if not dangerous. To take a glass^^^milk by itself is a sensible proceeding ; to take it on top of a hearty meal composed of proteids, carbohydrates and hydro-carbons is most unwise j to take it with acids is to. woo dyspepsia. Yet the latter method is the one most preferred, for cream is used as a mechanicai lubricant with all manner of acid fruits. As to temperature — in the summer season people prefer it ice cold, and some lunatics even put ice into it. If they taka it at the temperature cf the air, without accompanying solid food, it is probably speedily absorbed without going through the complex processes of gastric and 'heipatio digestion. If, on the other hand, it be taken ice cold, it ait once coagulates, and the stubborn casein in it sometimes requires hours for digestion j this latter is invariably the case when it i« accompanied with solid food. Many a mon and woman have died through drinking freely of iced milk on, a hot summer's d!ay. Adelaide Nielsen, the beaiutiful actress, went into a Paris restaurant on tho way to the Bois do Boulogne one summer day — one of those broiling, blistering, steaming days of which, in Paris they have so many, and of which we hear so little. She ordered a glaes of iced milk ; sho did not sip it — against the advice of
her companion, she drank* it rapidly, and followed it with another. In a few moments she was dead. Eheu ! Sho was a fine actress and a very beautiful woman. They show you the room in which she dieJ. They even point out to you the lounge on which s>he yielded up her last breath. " Yes, monsieur. Yes, madame. Voila,! — that is the place where the beautiful actress Aiiglais have die. She was very beautiful, very gentile. Oh, yes. It was a grand pity. Oh, yes. She drink a glass of the milk — cold, 'very cold. Thank you, monsieur. Thank you, a thousand times. Good day, madame; good day, monsieur."
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Bibliographic details
Star (Christchurch), Issue 7569, 29 November 1902, Page 3
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753MILK AS A MEANS OF SUICIDE. Star (Christchurch), Issue 7569, 29 November 1902, Page 3
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