ARTIFICIAL HUMAN MILK.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume IX, Issue 969, 13 August 1881, Page 3

ARTIFICIAL HUMAN MILK.

Db. W. S. Playfair, writing to the British Medical Journal, says : —“ I should like to direct the attention of practitioners to the artificial human milk now prepared by the Aylesbury Dairy Company, at a cost little over that of the best nursery milk. This ualuable method of treating cow’s milk was first brought under my notice some years ago by Dr. Frankland, the eminent chemist, who devised it for one of his own children who was ill; and I have since used it exten-

sively in my practice. Its composition is absolutely identical with that of human milk; and under its use the risks and disadvantages of the bottlefeeding of infants are reduced to a minimum. I have been in the habit of instructing nurses how to prepare it at home from Dr. Frankland’s receipe, but the trouble and difficulty of making it stood seriously in the way of its general adoption ; and, unless the nurse happen to be exceptionally intelligent, failure very frequently followed. For this reason, I suggested its manufacture to the Aylesbury Dairy Company, and the specimens with which they have since supplied me have been perfectly satisfactory, and require no further treatment than heating to the proper temperature. I look upon it as immeasurably superior to asses’ milk, than which it is much cheaper ; and if this valuable preparation were more generally known and used, much illness, in the case of children who cannot be brought up at the breast, be avoided.”