106 CONFERENCE ON MILK PROBLEMS 



DR. JOHN AMYOT, Health Officer, Toronto, Canada, spoke as 

 follows : 



THE SANITARY SIDE OF THE MILK QUESTION 



LADIES AND GENTLEMEN : The side of the milk question 

 that I am supposed to take up is the sanitary side. Cows' 

 milk has long been used as a food. It is practically a food 

 that has been applied to our needs. It is not a food that was 

 intended for the human baby at all. It is good food for the 

 adult, but it is a food which, when given to babies, is given at 

 a risk. Cows' milk was not intended for babies. The require- 

 ments of the calf are quite different from the requirements of 

 the human body. Milk varies in its composition and in its 

 characteristics, according to the animal that it is intended to 

 feed. The seal gves a milk that contains a very large quan- 

 tity of fat much more than any of the milks that we are ac- 

 customed to. The cow gives a much larger quantity of cal- 

 cium salts than human milk contains. Now, it becomes neces- 

 sary, at times, to feed the human baby on cows' milk, but that 

 is done at a risk. In this country it is said that the child 

 that is fed on cow's milk, runs about four chances to die to one 

 that it would run if it were fed on its proper milk. Some go 

 so far as to say that it runs nine chances to one to die when 

 fed on cow's milk. Now, that is partly due to the composition 

 of the milk. We all know that we can accommodate ourselves 

 to untoward conditions. We have a certain amount of reserve 

 in our physiological functions, that makes it possible for us to 

 accommodate ourselves to conditions around us. The human 

 baby can accommodate itself, but it sometimes fails, and un- 

 doubtedly a very fair percentage of babies that die, artificially 

 fed, die because the food is not suitable to them. But that is 

 not the serious part of it, because far the greater number of 

 deaths in artificially fed babies, is from the changes that take 

 place in the food that they are given, after it has left the cow. 

 It has been stated here that only one per cent of the milk sup- 

 ply of New York is a certified milk. In other places, perhaps 

 a little larger percentage may have been gotten. You know 

 how certified milk is produced. You start by choosing the 

 kind of cows that are to be used for the production of certi- 

 fied milk. Some times enough precaution is not taken, but 



