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Nothing could save it. Death from starvation would be its doom. This
would be the result with the quicker certainty if, acting in ignorance, or
pressed by penury, an insufficient quantity, say one pint a day, should be
given. Poisonous adulteration might act more promptly, but not more
certainly, than this fraudulent and unsuspected withdrawal of the means of
life. A child might struggle on with one pint of good milk a day, until it
was old enough to take farinaceous or other food; but no child could be
nourished on half-a-pint a day. The addition of water to cows' milk has
the further disadvantage of hardening the casein, and making it more
indigestible.
55. This question, therefore, is of immense importance to the poor,
and even to the more respectable classes, who may nourish their infants by
the spoon or bottle, or who may be compelled to practise economy in providing
food for their offspring. I have hardly ever known a child in a poor
family supplied with the quantity of milk which experience has shown to be
necessary for its due nourishment and growth.
Stall-Feeding. 56. With reference to the practice of stall-feeding of
cows, and the assumption that it deteriorates the milk, my observation does
not sanction this opinion, unless the cow-keeper feeds his cows with improper
food. Freshly-drawn milk is undoubtedly often acid, as I showed in my
Eeport last year, when tho cow from which it has been taken has been long
in the shed. Sour, unwholesome grains, would be likely to produce the same
result. A rich and nutritive milk, however, can be obtained as well from
the diet used in the shed as from grass; the cow being treated as a mere
machine, to produce a certain amount of good milk. Further, the milk of
grass-fed animals alone would fail to provide for the wants of our vast population;
the supply of such milk, both as to quality and quantity, being
inconstant for a constant demand.
The state of London Cow-Sheds. 57. On the other hand, the dilapidated
and unwholesome state of our cow-houses, the impossibility of keeping
such ruinous places clean, the liability to febrile, inflammatory, and tuberculousjdiseases
among the animals, arising from the enforced inhalation of the
foul effluvia steaming up from the filth around their feet, the probability
that certain epidemic diseases are but modifications of epizootics, and that the
deteriorated milk of diseased cows may infect injuriously the health of human
beings who use it: all these arc considerations pointing to thejirgent need
of the abolition of cow-sheds in the centre of populous cities. The evil of
intra-mural cowkeeping seems to me so obvious, that I am astonished it
should be permitted by our laws.
The small supply of Milk from St. Giles Cows. 58. The utility of
the practice to our. population is so trifling, that tho closure of every cowshed
in the district would not produce any perceptible inconvenience, for I
find that the daily yield of milk from all the cows kept iu the district does
not suffice to provide more than two tea-spoonfuls of milk per diem for each
person resident therein.
Composition of various Fabinaceous Foods.
59. Following up this subject, I have thought it right to report upon the
composition of the various kinds of farinaceous foods sold for children. The
subjoined articles I have submitted to microscopical examination :
Dr. Ridge's Food contains wheat starch granules, with small portion of
cellulose. It is said to be partially cooked before sale, but the wheat granules
are not perceptibly injured.
Brown Poison's is composed of Indian Maize starch granules, with
some cellulose.
Colma-t's British Corn Flour is composed of rice starch. There was no
" British Corn " of any sort in the specimen I examined. I have noticed