INSTITUTION OF PULMONARY PHTHISIS. 
121 
The question of the milch cow raises a series of very grave con- 
siderations upon hygiene and public alimentation. We should 
think ourselves wanting to our first duties not to fix the reader’s 
attention here ; and what is said of Paris admits of almost literal 
application to other cities. It might be doubted, on seeing the 
light bluish liquid which is sold in the streets of Paris under the 
name of milk, that this city feeds six thousand cows within its 
walls. Who consumes the milk of these six thousand cows ? The 
ice-cream confectioner, and the rich amateur who despises bap- 
tized milk. The imagination of the Parisian cockney is so pervert- 
ed that they palm upon him for cream, milk almost in its natural 
state. Pure milk is called cream in Paris. All the cows of Paris 
die phthisical. The six thousand above-mentioned are renewed 
every eighteen months. It is known that the milk communicates to 
the creature who drinks it the diseases of the creature that fur- 
nishes it. This truth is so perfectly demonstrated, that children are 
cured of certain maladies by giving medicine to their nurses, who 
transmit its influence through the medium of their milk. And pul- 
monary consumption now carries ofi‘ more than the fifth part of the 
Parisian population, and it rages especially over young girls ; and 
the scourge proceeds everyday, enlarging the circle of its ravages. 
The milk of Paris is no stranger to the progress of the mortality. 
The phthisis of the cow proceeds, like that of the poor work- 
women of Paris, from sedentary confinement, from want of motion, 
and of air. As soon as the symptoms of the disease manifest 
themselves, and the beast refuses to eat, she is knocked in the 
head and served up, under the form of surloins and beef steaks, 
to the Parisian cockney, who lives and dies in this comfortable as- 
surance, that butchers’ meat is only fit to be eaten in Paris. . . , . 
So that we eat, we drink, we breathe phthisis in every way. 
Just chastisement of commercial frauds. The man of the fields, 
simple and ingenuous in bis cheating, was contented to double the 
quantity of his milk by an innocent addition of spring water — a 
limpid and inodorous substance. 
Then comes Science, which has perfected the pastoral method, 
and discovered the means of adulterating milk with flour and mut- 
ton suet*. The rich consumer hopes to avoid both frauds by seek- 
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