514 PEDIATRICS 



into woman's casein and fat, that chemistry is physiology, that the 

 live stomach is like a dead laboratory bottle, that the warmth of the 

 human bosom and that of a nursing flask are identical, and that 

 cow's milk is like human milk when it carries the trademark "Certi- 

 fied," or "Modified." Physiological chemistry itself teaches that the 

 phosphorus combinations in woman's milk in the shape of nuclein 

 and lecithin are not contained in cow's milk, and that the large 

 amounts of potassium and sodium salts contained in cow's milk are 

 dead weights rather than nutrients, and particularly the large amount 

 of calcium phosphate occurs in a chemical, not in a physiological 

 combination. But lately, by no means the first time, Schlossmann 

 and Muro (Munch, med. Woch., 1903, no. 14) have again proved 

 that the albuminoids of woman's and cow's milk are essentially 

 different, both in their lactalbumin and the globulin, and Escherich 

 and Marfan, that every milk has its own enzymes. 



The quantitative and many of the qualitative differences of cows' 

 and human milk have been known a long time. No addition or ab- 

 straction of salts, no addition of cow's fat will ever change one into 

 the other. But it appears that every new doctor and every new 

 author begins his own era. There is for most of modern writers no 

 such thing as the history of medicine or of a specialty, or respect of 

 fathers or brothers. In modern books and essays you meet with 

 footnotes and quotations of the productions of yesterday that look 

 so erudite, but also with the new discoveries of old knowledge which 

 you would recognize if the quotation-marks had not been forgotten 

 by accident. So it has happened that many learn for the twentieth 

 time that the knowledge of the minimum amount of required food is 

 a wholesome thing, that the amount of animal fat in infant food is 

 easily overstepped, that we have discovered that the Dutch had a 

 clever notion when they fed babies on buttermilk with reduced fat ; 

 we are even beginning to learn what our old forefathers practiced a 

 hundred years ago, and physiologists taught a third of a century ago 

 namely, that the newly-born and the very young infant not only 

 tolerate small quantities of cereals but that they improve on it. 

 Indeed, the names of Schiller, Korowin, and Zweifel have been redis- 

 covered. We have also learned just lately, it appears what was 

 always known, that morning and night, idleness and work, health and 

 illness, while altering the chemical composition of woman's milk do 

 not necessarily affect its wholesome character. We are beginning to 

 learn that it is impossible to feed a baby on fanatical chemical for- 

 mulae, for they are not prescribed by Nature, which allows latitude 

 within certain limits. We are even beginning to learn that if that 

 were not so there would be no artificially fed babies alive, and possi- 

 bly very few participants in the St. Louis Congress of Arts and 

 Science. 



