Page:Food and cookery for the sick and convalescent.djvu/51

Rh cleaned, produce a food which can be modified to meet the baby's needs. Durham, Devon, Ayrshire, and Holstein breeds are most satisfactory. Always procure milk from the herd rather than from a single animal. If the supply be obtained from a single cow, it is not uniformly as good quality, for an indisposition, fright, or worry of the animal affects the milk, and this in its turn reacts upon the child.

Among intelligent and care-taking mothers, home modification is being successfully employed, always under the direction of a physician. It has advantages over laboratory modification, namely:—


 * 1) Less handling.
 * 2) Shorter time from milking to consumer.
 * 3) Gravity cream digests more readily than centrifugal cream.
 * 4) Less handling renders pasteurization seldom necessary.

It is beyond the scope of this work to give formulas for home modifications, as it is plainly the work of the physician. Simply for illustration a formula corresponding very nearly to human milk has been procured from one who is an authority on infant feeding.

Procure milk, delivered in quart glass jars, that has been reduced to a temperature of 45° F. as quickly as possible after milking, and allowed to stand for cream to rise for six or eight hours. Pour off eight ounces of top milk, or take out with a small dipper which comes for the purpose.

A glass tube is sometimes used for syphoning off the lower part of the milk, leaving the top milk in the jar. In order to do this a graduate glass is necessary, to determine the number of ounces drawn off. This later process being more complicated, is less practical for home modification.