3-20 MEDICAL SECTION 



digestible by the majority of infants. There is abund- 

 ant reason to believe that although the doctor may not 

 select the cases himself, yet that there is a natural 

 selection going on all the time : the mother who 

 finds her baby crying and vomiting on the first trial 

 of the nutriment, quickly absents herself and the baby, 

 so that only the successes tend to appear among the 

 regular attendants ; this at any rate until the clinic 

 has attained a certain amount of popularity, when 

 some moral hold may be had over the mother even 

 though the baby's symptoms sc.em to her unpropi- 

 tious. I fear that cow's milk must stand convicted 

 oi having caused indigestion in a considerable pro- 

 portion of infants fed on it, especially among those 

 weaned very young. The casein has been largely 

 blamed for this, but latterly in some quarters the 

 tendency has been to stigmatize the fat or the added 

 sugar, and to claim that when given undiluted and 

 without sugar, digestive troubles are eliminated. 

 Personal experience apart, it would seem extra- 

 ordinary that so simple a clue to success as giving 

 the milk without additions should have escaped the 

 observation oi generations of mothers, if this method 

 were at all universally applicable. 



Then! is no doubt that in a great number of cases 

 dried milk is strikingly more digestible than ordinary 

 milk, and that this is not due to the absence of cane 

 sugar is proved not only by the history that some 

 of the infants have previously had no excess of this, 

 but by the Leicester experience where they add cane 

 sugar to dried milk, and further by the fact that in 

 certain rases you may bring back the old symptoms 

 ot coiic and vomiting by adding less than a tea- 

 spoontul ot raw milk to the, dried milk feed. This 

 difference in digestibility is what strikes the mothers 

 at once, and it is an extremely common thing to hear 

 them say after the first week's trial, that the baby 

 has ceased vomitin<> and " rested better " than ever 



