218 THE MILK QUESTION 



of milk for infant feeding can neither be recommended nor 

 discountenanced as a general proposition. The saying that 

 "one man's meat is another man's poison" applies with 

 special significance to the artificial feeding of infants. The 

 general pasteurization of all milk used for the nourishing 

 of infants would be as irrational as the general use of one 

 formula. Each infant is a law unto itself, and whether it 

 is to receive heated or unheated milk must depend entirely 

 upon the conditions, especially the season of the year and 

 the quality of the milk available. 



Scurvy occurs in children fed both upon pasteurized and 

 unpasteurized milk; it may even occur in breast-fed in- 

 fants. Scurvy is at most a comparatively rare disease. As 

 there are countries where, despite sterilization, scurvy 

 practically never occurs, the cooking of the milk cannot be 

 the only cause of this disease. It is not a new disease, but 

 was described in infants for the first time only a decade ago. 

 Even at the present time the disease is often not recognized 

 by clinicians. Formerly the condition was called "acute 

 rickets" (Moller). In Germany we are told the dis- 

 ease is either exceedingly rare or not recognized. For 

 a long time the French claimed that the disease did 

 not exist among them, but during the past two or three 

 years there have been occasional reports of isolated cases 

 (Netter). 



The disease was first studied by English clinicians, and 

 we are especially indebted to Barlow, who, after a study of 

 eleven cases with post-mortem results of two, showed the 

 essential features of the disease and gave it the name of 

 scurvy. It is often spoken of as Barlow's disease, 1 or the 

 Moller 2 -Barlow disease. 



We do not know whether scurvy has increased greatly 

 during the past twenty years, or whether our more precise 



1 Barlow, M ed. and Chir. Transactions, London, vol. 66, p. 83. 



2 Moller, Akute Rachitis, Konigsberg. med. Jahrb., Bd. I (59), and 

 Bd. in (62). 



