Colonial North America: Countway Library of Medicine

44

Materia Alimentaria

Milk

the following case occurred under my own observation. I gave to a woman two grains of Opium it had little or no effect on her, in two hours after she suckeled the child and it immediately went to sleep and laid composed for twenty four hours, fluid diet greatly increases the secretion of milk. Some women are subject to costiveness during lactation. I knew two women who dread Lactation on this account being quite free from it both before and after. The milk of Bitches fed on vegitables may be coagulated with vinigar, but is more alkaline. If on meat it is not coagulable. Since the days of Dr Cullen the Pathology of the fluid I think has been too much neglected. I am convinced that the nature of aliments very much alters the nature of our fluids for instance the phosphoric acid is very much increased by a meat diet, milk is the proper food for infants, it must by coagulated before it can be digested we are therefore not to consider the pukeing of young children an unhealthy sign. Other milk is nutritious to the infant besides that of its mother. I know a person who is remarkably healthy aged twenty eight years and who was rais'd on cows milk. Dr Cullen supposed