542 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



scientific procedure. To supply an infant with contaminated 

 milk is certainly far from advisable but milk that has been 

 contaminated remains contaminated whether boiled or unboiled. 



Moreover, boiling of the milk does not protect the infant. 

 It irretrievably injures the food of the infant, definitely destroying 

 elements essential to nutrition ; whilst the interference with 

 the natural processes of digestion is so great that the infant 

 fed for any considerable period on boiled milk suffers severely 

 from malnutrition directly arising from atrophy of the digestive 

 glands. 



Among the poorer classes the boiling of milk plays an 

 important part in relation to the production of the most fatal 

 disease of infancy — zymotic enteritis. This disease is chiefly 

 caused by the putrefactive decomposition of cooked milk. The 

 changes that occur can only be produced when the milk is 

 cooked or its natural characteristics are interfered with, raw 

 milk being protected from these poisonous changes by the action 

 of the lactic organisms. These organisms acting in raw milk 

 produce lactic acid and the acidity thus engendered protects 

 the milk from putrefactive changes which can only occur in 

 milk that is neutral or alkaline. 1 



Recent developments in the milk trade have been distinctly 

 retrogressive. In the summer months it is becoming a common 

 practice for some of the milk companies to pasteurise the milk 

 prior to delivery. This is a matter of serious moment. Milk is 

 a natural article and the business of the milk-vendor is to supply 

 it in its pure and natural condition. 



The most pernicious of all practices in connection with milk 

 is the use of " preservatives." The action of these substances 

 on the infant is of the most serious character. At the very 

 beginning of gastric digestion processes essential to the health 

 of the infant are directly interfered with. In consequence of 

 this perversion the chemical changes attending digestion in 

 the intestine are interfered with and atrophic enteritis develops. 

 In the case of an infant suffering from the effects of preservatives 

 in the milk it has consumed, the full extent of the injuries 

 can scarcely be appreciated until the cause has been removed. 

 It is not till then that the harm done is fully realised, the 

 digestion being so injured that the most delicate adjustments 



1 For a fuller discussion of the effects of the boiling of milk, vide the writer's 

 Nutrition of the In/ant, 3rd ed. 19 10. 



