FRAUDS OF MILK SELLERS. 
consist in adulteration; we have already mentioned the case of 
skimming the milk, and selling the richer and poorer portions at 
different prices ; this cannot he characterised as fraud, so long as 
the difference of quality is admitted, but yet it has the effect of 
fraud upon the consumer of the skimmed portion, for the milk 
he obtains is precisely the same in quality as he would obtain 
if the milkman instead of skimming the milk had left it in its 
natural state, hut watered it, so as to reduce it to the poverty of 
skimmed milk. 
100. There is another expedient, commonly enough practised, 
which is attended with similar effects, when the milk is allowed 
to accumulate in the breasts or dugs of the animal until they 
become filled and distended, the first portion drawn from them will 
he poor, and the milk will become richer and richer until the 
vessels are emptied. This physiological fact is quite familiar to 
dairymen, who divide the milking of the cow into two parts, 
the fore-milk and the after-milk; the latter being sometimes called 
strippings . Now this richer portion of the milk is often reserved 
for cream, the fore-milk only being sold to the consumer. In 
accordance with the same principles it will he easily understood, 
that the more frequently the animal is milked, the more uniformly 
rich will he the fluid. 
All the circumstances here explained, and the tests provided, 
to ascertain the quality of the milk of inferior animals, are 
equally applioahle to human milk. Wet-nurses differ one from 
another evidently enough in the abundance of their milk, and this 
is a point which, accordingly, is never overlooked in the selection of 
nurses. The quality of the milk, however, being much less obvious, 
is rarely attended to. Yet it is even more important than the 
mere question of quantity. The physical researches of some of the 
French physiologists have shown that cases frequently occur in 
which there is a superabundance of milk; and where, though the 
woman presents the aspect of health and vigour, the milk is poor 
in butter, the globules being small either in magnitude or number, 
or both; they are sometimes observed to he ill-formed, to float in a 
liquid of little density, and sometimes to be mixed with corpuscles- 
of mucus and of a granular substance. These are characters incom¬ 
patible with the healthiness of tile milk, yet they are such as can 
only be detected by the microscope. Nevertheless, it is rare indeed 
that the medical practitioner ever thinks of instituting such 
inquiries, much less of resorting to the microscope or any other 
lactoscopic test. 
101. We have now indicated, so far as we are informed, all the 
methods by which the representations of microscopic objects are 
obtained, and of these that which gives the strongest guarantee of 
111 
