CHAPTER XXVIII.

LETTERS FROM CHARLES A. LEE, M. D. LATE PROFESSOR OF MATERIA MEDICA IN THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW-YORK, ETC.

Opportunities for observation.-Appearance of children fed on slopmilk.-Profits of slop feeding.-Value of the slop dairy to the distiller. Description of slop-milk.-Difficulty of obtaining pure milk for children.-Health of children destroyed by impure milk.-Influence of food on the quality of milk.-Letter II.-Prefatory remarks.-Effects of slop on the health of cattle.-Influence of slopmilk on health.-Fatal effects of it, with diagnosis of case.-Marasmus arising from innutritious diet.-Duty of municipal authorities in relation to the evil.-Letter III, from Mr. John Burdell, Dentist.-A drawing of a child's jaw with explanations.—Teeth, the indexes of the constitution.-How affected by impure milk.Early injury to the teeth never repaired.—Teeth of the present generation inferior to those of the preceding.-Effects of slop-milk not limited to infants.-Incidental considerations.-Process of nutrition. Phosphate of lime in pure milk.-Teeth and bones formed therefrom.-Beauty of this arrangement.

DEAR SIR:

LETTER I.

I embrace the earliest opportunity to give you, according to request, the results of my experience in relation to the influence of "still-slop-milk” upon children, and also as to its general effects as an article of diet.

I have now been a practitioner of medicine in this city upwards of fifteen years, and my opportunities of observing the agency of different causes upon the public health, have been rather extensive. For several years I was employed as a dispensary physician among the poor, and annually

treated more than two thousand patients with different diseases. The result of my experience and observation is, that the chief cause of the excessive mortality among children in cities, above that in the country, is owing to the nature of their diet. There are many parts of the country, where the water is much worse than in this city, and yet the health of the inhabitants does not seem to suffer. Good air is doubtless essential to rugged health, but the children of our wealthy citizens, who are supplied with suitable and nourishing diet, are not so often afflicted or carried off by those diseases, so prevalent and fatal among the poor.

Children who are fed with "still-slop milk," have a pale cachectic appearance, are extremely subject to scrofula, and are sure to take every epidemic disease prevalent. To scarlet fever, measles, hooping-cough, they are particularly subject, and will take them upon the slightest exposure. Such children are also very apt to sink under any serious disease, with which they may be attacked. There is a laxity of the solids and a vitiated condition of the fluids, which predispose them to disease in its most malignant form. If, for example, they are seized with scarlet fever, it will either be in the highly congestive form, which is almost certain to prove fatal; or it will be attended with that gangrenous or phagedenic ulceration about the throat, which is perhaps equally dangerous. And so of other disThere can be no doubt that this arises chiefly from a vitiated condition of the whole system occasioned by improper diet; and of this diet, "still slop milk," forms an important part.

eases.

You may have noticed that at all times of the year, on certain corners of our streets there are boys who take their stand every morning for the sale of milk. They generally furnish it at four cents a quart, and sometimes at three cents,

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PROFITS OF SLOP FEEDING.

and this is a great inducement for the poor to buy; instead of paying six cents for pure milk. This milk is mostly supplied by distillers, who keep cows on their premises, and to save the trouble of peddling it round dispose of it in this way. Now as it costs but about nine cents a day to keep a cow upon swill, and as cows in general give about ten quarts of milk a day, you can readily see that they can afford to sell it at that low price. Those who feed nothing but meal, grain, and hay to their cows, tell me that it costs from two shillings to two and sixpence a day to keep a cow. Of course their profits are smaller even when they sell at eight cents, than to sell the stillslop at four cents. Now I believe that our board of health could not do a better act than to prohibit the sale of slopmilk. They certainly have the power; and by exercising it, they would do far more good, than by stopping the sale of tainted meat.

Another thing. Were it not for the use of still-slop milk, our distilleries would most of them have to stop. As it is, they have to suspend operations when the price of grain is high; and at times they are in the habit of diluting their slops by adding more than half water, in order to save themselves from loss by the low price of whisky. I have been often told by milkmen, that occasionally slops are so thin and meager, that a peck of Indian meal disseminated in a hogshead of water, would contain more nutriment than the same quantity of swill. Indeed, it was this very imposition which induced several milkmen to stop feeding it to their cows.

There is another circumstance worthy of notice. Stillslop-milk is of a pale bluish color, and when cows are fed with it almost exclusively, as they are at the distilleries, it is necessary to color the milk in order to make it marketa

PURE MILK IMPORTANT.

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ble. This is actually pactised by all such milk dealers. Starch-flour, plaster of Paris, etc., are used for this purpose. This enables them to give it a rich and beautiful white color, and to dilute it with about an equal quantity of water. This may be called one of the "tricks of the trade" and of course it is thought nothing of by men whose consciences are not troubled by turning the "staff of life" into poison.

But to return. When called to visit a sick child, my first inquiry always is, what is the usual diet? Do you give milk to your children? Who is your milkman? These are usually my first questions; for the answers always furnish more or less clue to the proper treatment. It is a rare thing, I believe, in this city, for a judicious physician to allow a child to be brought up by the bottle, without particularly directing the kind of milk to be used, and how it is to be prepared. I have for a long time been convinced that it is far better and safer to use barley or rice and water, or arrow-root, and other farinaceous substances, than to allow any milk at all,-for such has been the difficulty of getting good milk, that there was always more or less danger of imposition. From late inquiries, however, I believe these difficulties are in a fair way to be removed.

I could give you any number of cases where the health of children has been utterly destroyed by the use of stillslop milk; and I could convince you that the cholera infantum itself, the great scourge of our city, is in fact caused chiefly by the use of this milk, either by the mother or child; for it is a singular fact, that in the large cities of Europe, where other causes of disease, with the exception of this, are as prevalent as in New-York, this disease is absolutely unknown. Hence the efficacy of a removal to

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PURE MILK IMPORTANT.

the country; as a change of diet is the necessary conse

quence.

The importance of good milk, will appear from a few considerations. Pure milk contains in it the basis of all nutriment, i. e. it is composed of an albuminous, a saccharine, and an oily principle, and no substance is nutritious that does not contain one of these. These are combined in milk in different proportions, according to the nature of the food on which the animal subsists. This was known even to the ancients; for Galen states that he endeavored to make milk more astringent, by placing the animal which was to furnish it in pasturage enriched for the purpose, with agrostis, lotus, and other astringent vegetables; and as the patient became convalescent, and could bear a richer nutriment, he was allowed to sail down the Tiber and use the milk of Stubiæ, which was celebrated for its excellence. I was much struck lately by a fact related by Dr. Dunglison in his Elements of Hygiene, which has a bearing on this subject. He states that “in a certain part of Virginia, where he resided, the hogs are fattened chiefly from the refuse of the stills after the distillation of whisky; or to use the expression of the farmers, they are still-fed.' The inferiority of the meat when thus forced, compared with the result of feeding them upon corn, and allowing them to roam abroad and obtain their food from acorns and chesnuts, in the woods, he says, is universally admitted."

But I deem it unnecessary to multiply facts on the subject; enough I trust has been said to convince any reasonable mind of the truth in relation to the matter. It only remains for those who are convinced to act accordingly. With much respect, your friend, CHARLES A. LEE.