Lacteopathy: A New Use for Milk.

Te Aroha News, Volume XXVII, Issue 43219, 24 August 1907, Page 2

Lacteopathy: A New Use for Milk.

Some time ago we published the following remarkable article. Like the soldier in time of peace it was not much noticed at the time, but now when the settlers have to wage war against much prevailing sickness requests have come to us from several quarters to have it re-published, so that the value of the method it recommends as a curative agent might have a fair trial. We have even received a telegram preferring the same requ. at;, with which we comply, upon the understanding that those who strictly carry out the terms of Dr. B. Simpson’s instructions shall report the result to us for the benefit of our many readers. Though the name and address of those reporting will be necessary as a guarantee of good faith such will not be necessary in publishing the results, unless it. he in accordance with the wish of the writer. The article is as follows: — . Cow’s milk is a well-known article in all communities. Its uses are many, and as an article of food it, is invaluable to old arid young, to the rich and the poor alike. The great variety of uses to which it can be devoted is remarkable, and yet another usq seems likely to bo found for it in. its service to mankind. As the basis of articles of food for young and old few single articles can be compared with milk, and it now appears as if it were to be recognised as a potential agent in the curing of various forms of diseases to which humanity is liable, The readiness of milk to absorb the odours to which it is exposed is well known, and this peculiarity/appeava likely to ue utilised as a curative agent. Already some remarkable cures are alleged to have been effected by this means, and if further extended experience should prove the correctness of what is already on record. it will be an agent of usefulness in back settlements, where ordinary medical aid is not always to be easily obtained, beyond all means of calculation. The usefulness of hydropathic appliances of wet sheet, etc., are well known and too little experienced in general, but the use of milk in connection with the wet pack seems likely to force this method of treatment into general use, for it is said to have been found by this method to be as useful in drawing from the human body all poisonous germs, as it is well known to have au aptness in absorbing into itself all the evil odours to which it may be exposed. W. Byron Sampson, M.D., according to an article of his in a recent issue of the “English Mechanic,’’ lias already obtained wonderful results from sweet milk as an agent for the cure of many forms of disease. He designates this method of treatment ‘ ‘ Lacteopathy,” and describes what he has already achieved as follows: — Some years atco it was discovered that a largo number of persons were attacked with typhoid fever from drinking milk which had been in buckets that had been washed in water from an impure well. I reasoned thus : “If milk will so absorb poisonous germs from a bucket, why should it not also absorb poisonous germs or gases from the human body?” I soon put the idea to the test, and got wonderful results from the local application of milk cloths to bad sores, erysipelas, etc., but the time soon arrived when I. W3-S----able to put it to 5 BIOTS definite. test. The smallpox broke out in Kimberley, South Africa, in 1884 where I was then practising, and I determined to try the efficacy of sheets soaked in fresh milk in absorbing that terrible disease, Accordingly, I visited several houses where smallpox patients had been removed to the lazaretto, and- I left word that if any other member of the household were attacked I should be sent for at once, as I could apply an absortive or preventive treatment. I then succeeded in treating some 18 or 20 cases attacked with the symptoms of smallpox, which (especially when raging in an epidemic form) are so marked as hardly to he mistaken. In one or two instances the sanitary physician visited every morning to remove the patients to the lazaretto as soon as the eruption appeared, but in every case which I thus treated with the milk sheet applied for an hour every four hours night and day it drew the smallpox poison so completely out of the body that the patients were nearly, all convalescent on the fifth day, no eruption having appeared on any of them. In one case, in a bad subject for the disease, pronounced severe (not attended by me), where the milk sheet was applied at night by a friend for two hours, and where the eruption had already appeared over the whole body, the milk drew the eruption so entirely from the skin that the physician in attendance was amazed next morning to find the eruption gone and his patient convalesent. Four days afterwards this man was up and about, and thanked me for having been the cause of saving his life. (To be continued.)