132 THE MICHIGAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 



MODIFIED MILK, 



But the laboratories and farms are iiiilk producers also, and supply 

 thousands of homes and nurseries with the very finest and purest milk 

 and cream, entirely suitable for all household purposes. 



Having, it is hoped, thus clearly differentiated prescription work for 

 infants and invalids from dairy work for the household, and particu- 

 larly for the nursery, a few words upon each of these branches are in ac- 

 cord with this occasion. 



As to theories of feeding, schools of feeding, or individual methods, 

 the laboratories have but one attitude^ namely: To carry out stricth' 

 and exactly the orders of the physician prescribing, and to leave the 

 question of methods absolutely with him. 



The laboratories do not advise, do not prescribe, do not sell infants 

 food ready made, but instead they act strictly in the same relation to 

 the physician, as the liharmacist does in regard to drugs that are pre- 

 scribed for medicines. 



This attitude has always been a puzzle to the laymen who pays the 

 bill for food, prescribed and delivered, therefore, it is only just and 

 proper to have it understood, that the laboratories are not responsible 

 for success or failure in feeding, but only for accuracy in the filling of 

 a prescription sent in by a physician in charge, and for the purity of 

 the materials employed. 



The physician has a free hand as far as the laboratory is concerned. 

 He may prescribe what he thinks wise to prescribe, and his prescription 

 will be filled with an accuracy which has found no parallel in the wide 

 domain of pharmacy. 



In the domain of infant feeding, the physician alone must be the 

 arbiter of method. This is the final .verdict of the intelligence and ex- 

 perience of the pediatrists of the world. It is also the final verdict of 

 the long and arduous trial by the Walker-Gordon laboratories in hun- 

 dreds of thousands of cases, successful and unsuccessful. With rare 

 exceptions no mother can compute, modify and administer the food for 

 the substitute feeding of her infant. None of the short and easy tables 

 for "Home Modifications'" are of value, save in the hands of an intelli- 

 gent physician. 



It is an axiom that every separate baby needs its own specially 

 adapted milk ; and the physician is alone capable of deciding so intri- 

 cate and important a matter as the adaptation of food to digestion. 



As to whole milk and cream, as soon as the Walker-Gordon labora- 

 tory was opened in Boston in 1S91, it became evident that Avhat was 

 known as "Dairying" must be quickly exchanged for the scientific pro- 

 duction of milk. 



The sterilization of milk, the pasteurization of milk, and even the 

 correct modification of milk, were all of them quite secondary to the 

 quality of the material employed. 



Let us touch briefiy on the early history of the Walker-fJordou Labora- 

 tory Co. The regeneration of the farm was the first thing to be accom- 

 plished ; very little of a practical character relating to scientific dairy- 

 ing had been published hitherto, here or elsewhere, except in the works 

 of Yaughan. The sciences of chemistry and bacteriology, now so indis- 

 pensable, had not been practically applied to higher forms of dairying. 



