PRACTICAL PAPERS—ARTIFICIAL MILK. 
271 
hand increases, and the necessity of new mod^s of nutrition 
becomes more apparent. 
Of what does Professor Liebig’s famous substitute for hu¬ 
man milk consist? The following is his process: A half an 
ounce of wheat flour is boiled with five ounces of skimmed milk 
until the mixture is transformed into a homogeneous mass; 
it is then taken from’the fire and to it is added half an ounce 
of cross-spired barley, which must first have been ground in a 
coffee mill and mixed with an ounce of cold water and a 
drachm of a solution of bi-carbonate of potash, the latter in 
turn made with eleven parts of water to two of potash. After 
having added th^barley the vessel is placed in warm water or 
in a warm place until the mixture has lost its consistency and 
has become liquid like cream. It is allowed to repose for fif¬ 
teen or twenty minutes^and is then replaced on the fire and 
made to boil for a few seconds, when it is removed and poured 
through a strainer of hair or thread, so as to eliminate the 
fibrous parts of the barley. Before giving the milk to the 
child it is allowed to settle in order that all the fine fibres of 
the barley that may remain in suspension may be percipitated. 
The artificial milk thus prepared contains, according to Pro¬ 
fessor Liebig, the plastic and respiratory elements essential to 
respiration and the nutrition of the body in about the pro¬ 
portion of from 10 to 38 on the 100 ; and this, still according 
to Professor Liebig, is the same as human milk. The French 
professors do not find this statement correct, especially as 
regards the quantity of life-giving principles in human milk, 
and they think that M. Liebig took his milk for experimenta¬ 
tion from a woman in a low state of .health. Thev think that 
c/ 
normal human milk contains more than from 10 to 88 per 
cent, of the essential elements of reparation, and that, admit¬ 
ting M. Liebig’s idea to be a good one, his compound is still 
unequal in force to the fluid it is intended to replace. This 
artificial milk has already acquired considerable extension in 
Germany, England and other countries, and in many localities 
it is the food furnished by charitable societies to the children 
of poor mothers, to such as are either obliged to abandon their 
