THE ETHICS OF FOOD 



II.— MILK 



By RALPH VINCENT, M.D., B.S., M.R.C.P., 



Senior Physician to the Infants Hospital, Westminster 



Pure milk is a vital necessity of the young. No other food 

 can take its place, the qualities and properties of milk being 

 peculiar to itself and definitely related to the peculiar digestive 

 powers of the infant and the precise requirements on which 

 structural and functional development depend. 



When the mother's milk is not available or is of defective 

 quality, as so frequently happens at the present time, the infant 

 becomes entirely dependent upon the milk of some animal. In 

 the case of young children, milk should always constitute a 

 large proportion of the daily food. 



The plentiful supply of cows' milk, pure and of good quality, 

 is an absolute essential to the rearing of a healthy and strong 

 people, properly equipped in regard to physical structure and 

 with those powers of resistance to moderate adversity of en- 

 vironment which constitute the determining factor in relation to 

 health or disease for a very large proportion of the community. 



In regard to children, nothing can well be more striking 

 than the secondary part played by pathogenic organisms in the 

 causation of permanent injury or disease. The well-nurtured 

 child attacked by one of the specific infectious diseases, such 

 as scarlet fever or measles, usually makes a good and rapid 

 recovery, so that the mother not infrequently remarks that the 

 child seems " all the better for it." Far otherwise is it in the 

 case of the child suffering from defective structure — the con- 

 sequence of chronic infantile malnutrition. The recovery is 

 anything but good or rapid : " sequelce" and complications make 

 their appearance. " Middle-ear disease," generalised tuber- 

 culosis and other disastrous consequences ensue as the result 

 of the child's inability to repel the invasion of elements hostile 

 to its health. 



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