FRAUDS OF MILK SELLERS. 



consist in adulteration ; we have already mentioned the case of 

 skimming the milk, and selling the richer and poorer portions at 

 different prices ; this cannot be characterised as fraud, so long as 

 the difference of quality is admitted, but yet it has the effect of 

 fraud upon the consumer of the skimmed portion, for the milk 

 he obtains is precisely the same in quality as he would obtain 

 if the milkman instead of skimming the milk had left it in its 

 natural state, but watered it, so as to reduce it to the poverty of 

 skimmed milk. 



100. There is another expedient, commonly enough practised, 

 which is attended with similar effects, when the milk is allowed 

 to accumulate in the breasts or dugs of the animal until they 

 become filled and distended, the first portion drawn from them will 

 be poor, and the milk will become richer and richer until the 

 vessels are emptied. This physiological fact is quite familiar to 

 dairymen, who divide the milking of the cow into two parts, 

 the fore-milk and the after-milk ; the latter being sometimes called 

 ^trippings. "Now this richer portion of the milk is often reserved 

 for cream, the fore-milk only being sold to the consumer. In 

 accordance with the same principles it will be easily understood, 

 that the more frequently the animal is milked, the more uniformly 

 rich will be .the fluid. 



All the circumstances here explained, and the tests provided, 

 to ascertain the quality of the milk of inferior animals, are 

 equally applicable to human milk. "Wet-nurses differ one from 

 another evidently enough in the abundance of their milk, and this 

 is a point which, accordingly, is never overlooked in the selection of 

 nurses. The quality of the milk, however, being much less obvious, 

 is rarely attended to. Yet it is even more important than the 

 mere question of quantity. The physical researches of some of the 

 French ph}'siologists have shown that cases frequently occur in 

 which there is a superabundance of milk ; and where, though the 

 woman presents the aspect of health and vigour, the milk is poor 

 in butter, the globules being small either in magnitude or number, 

 or both ; they are sometimes observed to be ill-formed, to float in a 

 liquid of little density, and sometimes to be mixed with corpuscles 

 of mucus and of a granular substance. These are characters incom- 

 patible with the healthiness of the milk, yet they are such as can 

 only be detected by the microscope." Nevertheless, it is rare indeed 

 that the medical practitioner ever thinks of instituting such 

 inquiries, much less of resorting to the microscope or any other 

 lactoscopic test. 



101. We have now indicated, so far as we are informed, all the 

 methods by which the representations of microscopic objects are 

 obtained, and of these that which gives the strongest guarantee of 



111 



