MILK: AS MEDICINE AND AS FOOD
By Medicus
The Girl's Own Paper, (November 1, 1884)
No longer ago than last evening I was paying a visit to a neighbour of mine, a professional man by the way, who lives some distance from London. I arrived unexpectedly, and found that coffee was being served. I always do get good coffee at this friend's house, because he buys the beans, short blunt little Mocha ones, and roasts them and grinds them himself. So of course I did not require a second invitation to partake of a cup.
"Hullo!" I remarked, "have you taken to Swiss condensed milk?"
"Yes," he said; "when there is any difficulty about obtaining fresh milk in the neighbourhood I fall back on the Swiss. There is no adulteration in it, and only sugar sufficient to make it keep."
"Well," I replied, "I daresay you are right, seeing that milk in cities is so very much adulterated. For I do not think there is anything deleterious in the condensed article, only I prefer the other myself."
"Once upon a time," I continued - but I suddenly paused, for I had no wish to be compelled to commence story-telling. I was too late, however, for my friend's wife said:
"Once upon a time, doctor - go on, please; you were going to treat us to one of your experiences."
" The Swiss milk reminded me," I replied, "that once upon a time I was starting upon a long voyage to the uttermost regions of the earth, when it occurred to me that milk would be a great treat while at sea. So I bought four dozen hermetically sealed tins of this delectate from an Aberdeen firm of some notoriety. I was assured that it was the best new milk that could be procured in that county of shorthorns and black polls. And so it turned out. But the fact was and the fault was that the milk was too good, for when, after being a few months at sea, I went one day and opened my case, and took out a tin, I found nothing in it but buttermilk and butter. The motion of the ship had effected the change. However, the buttermilk was delicious, and the butter itself really a treat. But, if ever I go so long a voyage again, I shall take a supply of condensed milk for private use."
Now, before going any further in this paper, let me give you a receipt for an excellent substitute for milk in tea or coffee. It is simply a new-laid egg, well beaten up, and a little warm water and sugar added to it. Many prefer this to milk, and it is certainly most nourishing.
Milk is the simplest and most perfect of all foods for the young, and it is often used with great benefit by both old and young as a medicine.
I must speak of it first as a food.
First, then, catch your hare; in other words, procure your milk as pure as possible, free from adulteration, and in every way genuine. The littlest housekeeper who reads these lines can tell very easily whether or not the milk supplied to the family contains a sufficient proportion of cream. She has only to pour it into a thin glass tumbler, and stand aside for a few hours, when the cream will show itself on the top, and it should be quite as thick as three penny pieces placed one on top of the other.
The milk, moreover, should not be bluish in colour, and it ought to be very pleasant to the taste, and not at all salt.
It is a difficult thing, however, for our little housekeeper to tell good milk by looking at or even by tasting it, for if it has been sold by unprincipled dairymen - and I fear there are a deal of them about - after having added water to it to increase its bulk, they will not have forgotten to add also some treacle, with perhaps a little salt, or some annatto and sugar, in order to restore its colour and give it flavour.
Again, the milk supplied may be good enough and rich enough, but may have come from a dairy where they are not over particular in cleanliness. In milk like this there will be a slight black sediment. Now, I would not have my readers use such milk on any account. The sediment, it is true, may only be dust, but that dust has no business to be there, and I feel convinced that people who are not particular about the cleanliness of their milk, their milk utensils, and milkmen, would not hesitate to allow the cow herself to drink putrid water, if she felt so inclined. And this is precisely how that terrible disease, typhoid fever, is often spread throughout whole villages and parishes. So girl housekeepers must beware, even in country places. Those who live in cities would do well to study the outs and ins of the dairy from which they get their milk, and on no account should they buy what I may call second-hand milk, that is, milk which has been sold from a dairy to a small milk or bread shop, and from which it is retailed.
Another hint I must give you about milk. Pray do not forget that it is an absorbent of whatsoever impurities may be floating in the air around it. Put it in a clean jug when you get it, place that jug in a pure atmosphere, and, in order to make assurance doubly sure, cover it up.
Never keep milk long before using it. Have it fresh and fresh.
Whether the milk you buy be intended for young or for old, for those who are well or those who are sick, get it if you can from the same cow as long as possible. Young cows give the best milk, and cows that are well-tended, well-fed, and well-bedded at night. But some kinds of food, such as turnips, may affect the flavour of the milk and, on the whole, you cannot expect milk to be quite so good in December or January as it is in June.
I should add to this, however, that just after the cows have been turned out to the young grass in the spring, the milk becomes more abundant but also more watery, so one has many things to study before jumping to the conclusion that the milkman has been calling in the assistance of "the cow with the iron tail."
Charity is a rare but beautiful virtue. It is Burns who says,
"O! gently scan your brother man."
I should advise you to act up to what the poet preaches. Gently scan your brother man, but at the same time if he be a dairyman, and did not supply me with what I considered right, I am not so sure I would not take my jug to the next shop, scanning or not scanning.
We ought to be more than particular about the kind and quality of milk infants have. If typhoid fever may be begotten in the human being - as it sometimes is - from drinking milk from cows that have imbibed or drank that which is unwholesome, can we be so very certain that bad milk may not sometimes be the beginning of many and many a little ailment in infancy?
It may occur to some mothers who read this paper that boiling the milk before giving it to the child would effectually prevent any danger from anything injurious which might be in it. True, it might and very likely would, but it should be remembered that if you boil the milk you to some extent spoil the milk, for you rob it of many of its salts and other of what I may content myself with calling its virtues as a food.
The milk given to an infant should be, as I have said, if possible, from the same cow all along. I quite agree with most medical men that the outcry against the mixing of milks is nonsensical, but at the same time if the article can be procured from a young and healthy, well-conditioned cow, then my advice is to hold by that cow, and I believe most mothers will agree with me.
The milk given to a very young child say two to four months old, that is being brought up by hand, should be half hot water with a teaspoonful or more of sugar in each bottleful (the sugar of milk is best - this can be had at any respectable druggist's shop). In addition to this, as the milk of the cow is apt to be, or soon to turn acid, and cause attacks of indigestion, to each feeding bottleful should be added from a teaspoonful to a dessertspoonful of lime-water. This is also got at the chemists, though it is easily made, and for the benefit of those who live in far-off country districts, I here give the receipt for its manufacture: - Take of slaked lime, one ounce; pure filtered water, half a gallon; put them in a large stoppered bottle then well shake for several minutes, then stand aside till this sediment sinks, when it must be drawn off with a siphon into a green-glass bottle for use as wanted, and this bottle must be kept well stoppered.
As the child gets older more sugar and less water should be used.
A word about the water itself that is put into baby's milk. If common well water, often so hard, disagrees even with the constitutions of grown-up persons, how much more likely is it to injure the tender infant? Use then pure, soft, filtered water and nothing else, even if you have to send a hundred miles to procure it.
But lime-water in milk is good for invalids of all ages as well as for children. It aids the digestion of it in a remarkable degree. Indeed, many people could not assimilate milk at all if it were not so treated. They may swallow it, and it may lie in an undigested semi--hardened state in the stomach for days, and thus be very injurious to the system, and militate against the chance of the patient getting well.
I cannot put it too strongly, and I beg invalids most earnestly to remember, that although milk if it can be digested is a most invaluable food, if not assimilated it is all but a poison. Your milk and soda- water I have little faith in, unless lime-water has been added to it, for there is no soda nor any alkali in soda -water; it is only aerated water pure and simple.
Milk is more easily borne by the invalid with breakfast than at any other meal, and it should not be taken with supper unless well cooked, and only then if it is found to agree and not to cause sleepless nights. Porridge and milk is much vaunted as a supper dish by our brethren beyond the Tweed. Well, it should be taken early if at all, and it ought to be borne in mind that in a naturally bracing country like the north of Scotland, where people live a great deal out of doors, many an article of diet can be used with benefit which we in the south cannot touch with impunity any more than we could thistles.
Goat's milk is the most nutritious of all milks, but not the most easily assimilated by weak stomachs.
Ass's milk is easy of digestion, and is therefore often prescribed for the delicate invalid.
Milk is not the best drink invalids can take, but warm from the cow in the morning it does good. Buttermilk and whey pocess many virtues, and certainly ought to be drunk by human beings instead of being thrown to the pigs, as they invariably are in England.
If I had a patient of a delicate constitution or one suffering from debility, who was about to go to some bracing mountainous country, or to the seaside for change, I should very likely recommend milk as a medicine. "Get the best," I should say, "goat's, if possible. Take it in small quantities at a time, and add a little lime-water to it. If at the same time you can digest cod-liver oil, take that; and if you cannot, take the extract of malt instead. This is an excellent tonic." Milk is invaluable to the consumptive. He or she ought to try to take it, just as much as she tries to take cod-liver oil.
Milk is an emollient and a demulcent, and of great use in coughs and colds, and in many states of debility or actual disease of the internal organs.
Milk, then, is most valuable to even grown-up people both as a medicine and as a food, but to the young, especially the very young, it is life itself.