NA TURE 



[November i i, 1922 



The Peril of Milk. 



Bv Prof. HENRY E. Armstrong. 



\ CONFERENCE of a must important and serious 

 " ^ i liaracter was held in the Council Chamber of 

 the Guildhall, London, on October 16-18, during the 



week of the Hairy Show, dealing with our milk supply 

 in practically all its aspects — except the scientific ! 

 Ye1 we speak of science as salvation, perpetually 

 proclaim its importance, and deplore public apathy 

 its priesthood. Our class was not invited 

 to participate. I heard of the conference only casu- 

 ! bought myself in, only at the very last 

 consequently I was relegated to a place in 

 the gallery behind the speaker's chair, where I could 

 not hear a word. Being unobtrusive in my ways. 

 I descended to the floor and trespassed into a 

 vacant seat; the platform was all but empty but no 

 invitation to take a chair upon it came down to 

 me. I do not wish to complain but merely poinl 

 out the rewards of scientific service and the effusive 

 waj in which the man of affairs welcomes our aid. 



I make this statement, indeed, just to show where 

 we are in public esteem, when subjects of vital im- 

 portance to the national welfare, with which we alone 

 i. in deal effectively, are under discussion — nowhere! 

 Whose is the fault ? Our own ! We are mouldering 

 away in our laboratories and when we seek to make 

 known what we have been doing use a jargon which 

 we cannot ourselves understand. That we have a 

 public duty to perform seems never to occur to us. 

 Much of our so-called research work is very largely 

 wasted effort, without any real intelligence behind it 

 - without policy and without imagination. The real 

 problems are all but untoui hed 



< )ur knowledge of milk is practically nil — this was 

 made clear at the conference. As the result of our 

 careless abstention from the affairs of the world, 

 sentiment and commercialism are quietly, without 

 hindrance, wreaking their will upon the country, 

 hew are aware, I think, of the extent to which milk 

 is ceasing to be milk as the cow gives it : how it is 

 being tampered with to overcome initial avoidable 

 carelessness, to make it keep and to satisfy the im 

 discriminating animus against micro-organisms engin- 

 eered into existence, of late years, by bacteriologists, 

 Apart from the wonderful livestock, the feature of the 

 1 >airy Show was / \t ,/, m i ting plant. One of the most 

 interesting of these is to be operated at 135 C. ! 



I was the first to take the floor after the opening 

 paper was read, dealing with breed of cattle in rela- 

 tion to quantity, composition and cost of milk pro- 

 duction. I deplored the absence of the chemist and 

 insisted that we know nothing of the composition of 

 milk in any proper sense of the term — that to talk 

 of it in terms of fat and solids-not-fat was equivalent 

 to describing a house in terms of percentages of 

 bricks, mortar, wood, etc. Modern discovery had 

 taught us that the essential value of milk lay in 

 certain mysterious minor constituents which could 

 neither lie identified nor quantified — yet were of most 

 vital consequence: which 1 would term advitants— 

 to catch the public ear, maybe vitalites were better — 

 bul refuse to misname vitamins. 



To justify Pasteurisation, we have to show that no 

 harm is done to milk by heating it above bloodheal 

 To heat it above this temperature is to tiv.it it 

 unnaturally — this cannot be gainsaid. That it is 

 altered thereby is proved up to the hilt. The conten- 

 tion is that, by making a certain addition, we can 

 compensate for the alteration — but we have onl) 

 superficial evidence in favour of this contention. The 

 medical profession has only recently had its attention 



NO. 2767, VOL. I 10] 



din 1 lid to these matters — it does not know yei what 

 to look for. ddie effects may lie deep-seated, we 

 know ; mid they may come but slowly under notice. 

 Time alone, combined with the most refined study of 

 the problem, can prove that it is safe to trespass 

 beyond Nature's limit. The second teeth, we know, 

 are formed at birth ; scurvy affects their structure ere 

 change be noticeable externally ; and so it may be in 

 other cases. The bad teeth of our nation are prob- 

 ably, at least in large part, due to defective nutrition 

 in early years and they affect us throughout life. 

 Nation, whose children are all breast-fed have good 

 teeth. 



Idie only rational assumption to make is that no 

 constituent of milk is without a purpose and that, if 

 anything in it be destroyed, it loses in dietetic value. 

 The recent remarkable discovery, that a something 

 secreted by the pancreas, no gross constituent appar- 

 ently, is required for the normal metabolism of so 

 combustible an article of diet as sugar, should be a 

 warning against destroying any natural agent in 

 a whole food like milk ; especially in view of recent 

 work by Govvland Hopkins. 



At a time when we are beginning to know these 

 things, we have no right to develop an unnatural 

 practice and allow it to become general. We must 

 gain much more knowledge before making up our 

 minds. On all sides, at the conference, it was re- 

 cognised that clean raw milk can be produced and 

 purveyed, if we will but take a little care. 



Scurvy, rickets, beriberi, we know, are diseases 

 affei ting us as consequences of malnutrition ; scurvy 

 became rife in Denmark early in the war, on the 

 farms, when the children were fed on Pasteurised 

 milk. Who shall say that a host of our minor com- 

 plaints are not due to dietetic deficiencies ? Women 

 are often most faddy feeders and the frequent 

 appearance of nervous disorders in their sex may well 

 be connected with lack of vital elements, even due 

 to seed sown in infancy. We may be laving the 

 foundation of complaints worse than cancer. 



Who knows or does not know ? At present we 

 can assert nothing, either way, so crass is our ignor- 

 ance : so let us halt while we may. 



Hie effect of food on the cow's milk was more than 

 once brought out at the meetings. We were told 

 that milk" from cows that had been stall-fed but 

 grazed occasionally proved vastly richer in one of the 

 advitants than that from animals simply stall-fed ; 

 also that two varieties of one root crop had different 

 effects on the production of milk. Pigs apparently 

 give healthy pork when grass-fed but no1 when 

 starved of green food. The whole field of food in- 

 quiry lies open before us. Prof. Stenhouse Williams — 

 dairy bacteriologist at Reading College — and I were the 

 only speakers to sound the note of nutritional danger 

 from Pasteurisation. We stood alone. Rothamsted, 

 which claims to stand at the head of agricultural 

 research, was unheard ; the Animal Nutrition station 

 at Cambridge was voiceless. Sir W. Morley Fletcher, 

 of the Medical Research Council, who took the chair 

 at the discussion on Pasteurisation, had not a word 

 to say bv way of caution. The Medical Research 

 Council, however, has never had a chemist among its 

 members ; and yet medicine is nothing but applied 

 chemistry. 



\\ In re, we may ask, are the Prophets ? Science is 

 simply disgracing itself in this matter of milk : the 

 call to wake up and defend the public health must 

 go out everywhere. 



