126 REVIEW — TROPICAL MEDICINE, ETC. 



Milk— ^ Cahill' points out that goats' milk is superior to cows' milk as a food for infants. 



cotdiiiued It is primarily more digestible because its casein forms only a floeculent curd, and the 

 infant does not suffer from the accumulation of hard cheesy masses, as with cows' milk. 

 The goat is singularly resistant to tuberculosis, and the nourishing power of its milk is just 

 as light as that of cow's milk. He mentions that goats' milk has no unpleasant or peculiar 

 smell or taste, provided the goat be kept under cleanly conditions and apart from any 

 association with the male of its species. It is said to be a fact that when a he-goat is 

 allowed to run with a herd the females acquire, for the time, something of the characteristic 

 smell_of the male and that their milk becomes similarly affected. Wright'- also praises 

 goats' milk as a food for infants. He contrasts the goat, a cleanly animal, with the 

 byre-stalled cow, the reverse. The faeces of the former are practically solid and rolled 

 in balls so as to prevent any possibility of their adhering to its hind quarters. On this 

 account these parts, as also the udder, are always fresh and clean. Goats dislike filthy 

 surroundings and will not lie down amongst their excreta nor eat soiled fodder. 



The goat is practically immune to tuberculosis, and, with but few exceptions, the 

 only instance where they have been found to be affected are when they have been closely 

 housed with tuberculous cows, from which they have derived their infection. This being 

 so, and the animal being small and hardy, goats can be kept in pens within the city 

 without detriment to their health, although it might be advisable to let them loose in 

 the open once a year, where they can live on any uncultivated land and clean it for 

 cultivation in a very short time. Wright also gives some very interesting quotations and 

 statistics, and cites Place, who, after much experience, says : — 



_ Anyone who will take the trouble to look up the data will readily see that in those countries where the goat 

 IS domesticated and its milk is used in the family, there is very little tuberculosis, almost no scrofulous glands, and 

 the infant mortality naturally is decidedly less for those children who use the milk. 



It is also said that the statement regarding the alleged odour of goats' milk is 

 erroneous. If the goat be allowed to roam about and to eat weeds, twigs and all kinds 

 of vegetation at will the milk is apt to be very strong in odour. On the contrary, 

 however, if the animal be fed purposely for obtaining palatable milk, no odour can possibly 

 be detected. 



Hook says : " The milk from goats fed on an English meadow on the roadside has no 

 flavour to distinguish it from cows' milk." 



As it is probable that the supply of milk obtained chiefly from cows at the Government 

 farm will increase in the future, some notes from a useful and practical paper by Kinsella^ 

 may be quoted with advantage. Dealing with the care and aeration of milk, he first 

 considers : — 



Flavours in J/zYi-.— Ordinarily speaking, we have two classes of injurious flavours in milk to contend with. 

 Those are food and contamination. All those flavours of various foods which are fed to the cow, and which the 

 milk absorbs from the animal before being milked, are termed "food flavours," As a rule such flavours are more 

 pronounced at the time of milking. 



Contamination flavours are those which gain access to the milk after it leaves the udder of the cow. These 

 latter flavours are of two kinds, or rather come from two sources : one is due to the flavours of certain substances 

 which are absorbed by the milk after milking ; the other is due to the milk being directly influenced by bacteria, 

 which also takes places some time after the milking has been completed. 



Food Flavours.— ^^eaki-ag from a practical point of view, food flavours cannot always be entirely eliminated, 

 yet they can be minimised by judicious feeding and by proper aeration in a pure atmosphere. Pood flavours are 

 primarily due to the presence of volatile oils contained in the strong flavoured foods, and such flavours leave the 

 animal through the different secretions of the body. 



When the feeding is done immediately after the milking, these food flavours lari<ely pass off through the other 

 .secretions and are not so noticeable. On the contrary, when the feeding is done during the milking process, or 

 shortly before, the larger portions of these objectionable flavours are thrown off from the body of the animal 

 by means of the milk. 



When it is absolutely necessary to use such feeds as turnips and large quantities of maize ensilage, or other 

 feed which causes such disagreeable flavours, the dairyman can les-sen the trouble considerably by feeding with 

 discretion as above recommended. If, also, some rough forage be fed along with the foods, which cause the 

 objectionable flavours, it will assist in doing away with such flavours. 



Contamination of Flavours.— Vfhile feed flavours are to a certain extent beyond the control of the supplier or 

 milk vendor, contamination flavours are entirely within his control ; but the great trouble is that suppliers 

 to factories and city and town milk vendors frequently attribute such flavours to the feed the cows eat, in order to 

 screen the lack of cleanliness. 



» Cahill, J. (October 6th, 1906), "Goats' Milk for Infants." Lancet, Vol. II. 



- Wright, W. (November 3rd, 1906), " Infantile Mortality and Goats' Milk." Lancet, Vol. II. 



■■' Kinsella, J. A. (1903), "City and Town Milk Supply, and the Care and Aeration of Milk." Transvaal 

 Department of Agriculture, Bull, No. 6. 



