[To on Bunco or Ts. SPECTATOBn Sie,—Permit me to express
a hope that the discussion of the question of the " niceness" of cooked or uncooked milk will not be allowed to obscure the vast importance of the point insisted on by Dr. Huxley in his first letter. Those who shrink from accepting any conclusions reached by experiments on animals may be reminded that the desirability of boiling milk does not rest on the researches of Dr. Klein. It has been abundantly proved that three of the most serious diseases—typhoictfever, diphtheria, and scarlet-fever—have been repeatedly spread by the agency of milk, and there is the strongest reason to believe that the danger may be entirely prevented by boiling the milk. It is sometimes said that children do not thrive so well on boiled as on nnboiled milk. I believe this to be entirely erroneous. My own children, four in number, have drunk no milk that has not been boiled, and no children could have thriven better. The importance of the practice was impressed on me long ago by an experience that I trust none of your readers may share. I was the only person in my house who took unboiled milk, and I was the only person who suffered from typhoid-fever during an outbreak, every sufferer in which drank milk unboiled supplied by a certain dairy. I would add that it is practically quite easy to have the whole of the milk, as soon as delivered, placed in a large saucepan and well boiled. The importance of Dr. Klein's researches is that they make it probable that, if this custom were universal, scarlet fever at least might cease to exist. —I am, Sir, &c.,
W. R. Gowsas, M.D.
Previous page
