PREFACE 



THE Medical Research Committee are charged with the administra- 

 tion of the Research Fund which has become available under the 

 provisions of the National Insurance Act, for the advancement 

 of medical knowledge by research. It falls to their duty, there- 

 fore, in the application of that Fund, to aid, to initiate, and to 

 organise the work of scientific enquiry along available lines of 

 advance, towards the enlargement of our powers of preserving 

 health and of diminishing disease. 



Among the plans for research which the Committee formulated 

 at the beginning of their work, the subject of Milk, in its relations 

 to public health, was naturally included. The study of milk is 

 from its nature what has been called a 'borderland subject/ and 

 has attracted enquiry by workers employing the widely different 

 technical methods of chemistry, of physiology, of bacteriology, 

 of agricultural science, and of clinical medicine. The results of 

 this work have been published separately in the technical archives 

 and journals devoted to those special branches of science, and 

 these publications are dispersed widely through the literatures 

 of many different languages. To the workers in any one field 

 the bibliography of his own subject is familiar, or at least easily 

 accessible, but in the case of a subject not falling wholly within 

 the customary boundaries of a conventional scientific field, it is 

 a matter of difficulty involving great expenditure of time and 

 labour to secure a general view of the state of knowledge as it 

 exists at any given moment. 



Such a general view, however, of present knowledge and of 

 its basis in gathered evidence is a necessary preliminary to the 

 proper organisation of fresh researches, and the Medical Research 

 Committee accordingly invited Dr. Janet Lane-Claypon, who had 



