322 MEDICAL SECTION 



one case at nine months. I have also followed 

 up as many as possible to the ages of three, 

 four, and five years, and am personally convinced 

 that there is no more risk of rickets with this 

 diet than with a good quality raw cow's milk. 

 Exceptional cases do occur, but they are almost 

 invariably capable of a ready explanation. For 

 instance, mothers occasionally manage to escape 

 through the meshes of our careful oversight, and are 

 found to be giving some of the food to an older child, 

 or for some other reason underfeeding or neglecting 

 the baby. Then twins are particularly liable to pallor, 

 muscular flaccidity and irregular growth of the 

 cranium, which is largely independent of their diet ; 

 and this condition is not confined to twins, but 

 may appear in isolated cases or in several members 

 of a family, especially where the mother is liable to 

 hyperemesis and other troubles during pregnancy. 

 Such cases may appear on any diet, even on breast 

 milk of good quantity and quality. 



With regard to scurvy, I believe the risk is non- 

 existent. I did see one slight case two or three years 

 ago, which was cured within three days, but the 

 mother in this instance had been attending very 

 irregularly, and I was never able to satisfy myself as 

 to what the baby's diet really had been. Besides this 

 I have seen no other, and I am not in the habit of 

 ordering any orange juice or other anti-scorbutic. 



Since the finding of so-called " biological sub- 

 stances " in raw milk, there has been a strong feeling 

 in favour of giving milk without any heating beyond 

 body temperature. Dr. Janet Lane-Claypon, however, 

 after a full analysis of all the work that has been done 

 on this subject, besides original work carried out by 

 herself, has shown that the advantages claimed are 

 illusory. She shows that the '' ferments " are almost 

 wholly due to bacterial action, and that the minute 

 quantities present in "pure" cow's milk are not only 





