Coats' Milk 201 



very friable, and very soluble, like those in the milk of the 

 ass and in human milk. (2) The curd in both human milk 

 and in that of the goat, after agitation, is precipitated 

 very slowly and incompletely, while the curd of cows' 

 milk is precipitated very rapidly and very completely. (3) 

 Submitted to the action of digestive ferments, human milk 

 and the milks of the ass and the goat were digested com- 

 pletely in twenty hours, whilst the same process applied 

 to cows' milk showed only a very slight advance after 

 sixty hours. (4) The milk of the goat approximates 

 more in its composition and digestibility to human milk 

 than that of any other animal. 



Dr. Augustus Voelcker, the well-known analyst of the 

 Royal Agricultural Society of England, some years ago 

 explained the comparative digestibility of goats' milk in 

 the course of his report upon some goats' milk he had been 

 analysing. " The cream-globules in goats' milk," he 

 remarked, " are smaller than in cows' milk, and as the 

 milk is more concentrated than cows' milk, the cream- 

 globules are contained in goats' milk in a more perfect state 

 of emulsion than in cows' milk, in consequence of which 

 hardly any cream rises to the surface on allowing goats' 

 milk to stand at rest for twelve hours or longer. One of 

 the samples threw up scarcely one per cent, of cream, and 

 the two others none at all, on standing for twenty-four 

 hours." 



In order to destroy in cows' milk any possible germs 

 likely to generate disease in the human organism it has 

 been the practice of late years to sterilise it, in which con- 

 dition it becomes, as has been truly said, " a congealed 

 defunct liquid." D'Escherisch, who has studied com- 

 paratively milk fresh and sterilised, has shown that milk 

 is not merely a nutritive liquid, but is endowed with 

 a biological activity upon the digestion, absorption, and 

 assimilation of its component parts. " Milk," he says, 



