MILK. 101 



to form a definite opinion upon this subject. The analyses of 

 L'Heritier, 1 and Yernois and Becquerel, 8 indicate a greater 

 proportion of most of the solid matters in the milk of 

 brunettes, with a very slight difference in the proportion of 

 butter in favor of blondes. Almost all authorities who have 

 expressed an opinion upon this question give the preference 

 to the milk of brunettes. Donne, however, expresses him- 

 self very decidedly against the popular prejudice in favor of 

 brunettes as nurses. " As regards the color of the skin and 

 the hair, the results at which I have arrived in nowise jus- 

 tify the generally-received popular prejudice in favor of 

 brunettes ; in more than four hundred nurses, I found no 

 sensible difference in favor of brunettes over blonde women 

 or over those with chestnut hair; but of nine red-haired 

 women, five only presented the proper qualities."' It 

 would be interesting in this connection to determine wheth- 

 er there be any marked difference in the milk of the black 

 and the white race, particularly as it has long been the cus- 

 tom in some parts of the United States to permit white 

 children to be nursed by black women. Infants that are 

 nourished in this way apparently thrive as well as those 

 nursed by white women; and there is no reason to sup- 

 pose that there is any difference in the milk of the two 

 races. Sir Astley Cooper mentions some interesting facts 

 concerning the black women of the West Indies, communi- 

 cated to him by his nephew, Dr. Young, which show that 



1 L'HERITIER, TraitS de chimie pathologique, Paris, 1842, p. 638; YERXOIS ET 

 BECQUEREL, op. cit., p. 52. 



2 L'Heritier was the first to compare critically the milk of blondes with that 

 of brunettes. In two women, twenty-two years of age, and subjected to the same 

 regimen, the milk of the brunette contained much more caserne, butter, sugar, 

 and salts, than the milk of the blonde ; but these two instances presented the ex- 

 tremes of difference ; and as the mean of all his observations, it was found that 

 the difference was comparatively slight. Yernois and Becquerel arrived at es- 

 sentially the same results, except that the proportion of butter was a little 

 greater in the milk of fair women. 



3 DOXXE, Cours de microscopic, Paris, 1844, p. 409. 



