Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 73.djvu/175

Rh highly organized, irritable nervous temperament, doubtful vital resource or resistance, is entirely unsuitable to rear a child. The same is true of the cow, and her individual adaptability must now be subjected to the same scrutiny. Many an infant has had its life imperiled or has been lost owing to its receiving its nourishment from a nurse who has suffered from disappointment, anger, hysteria, indigestion, lack of exercise or the like.

Much of our artificially fed infant mortality is due, directly or indirectly, to the presence in cows' milk of similar poisons generated in nature's wonderful laboratory and as defiant of test-tube analysis as are those other qualities in the milk of strong, hardy cows which, for want of better names, we designate as vital energy or vital force.

Speaking of vitalizing power in the milk of certain cows as compared with others, Professor Carlisle, of the Wisconsin Experiment Station, says:

The point I wish to make here is that there is such a thing as vitality in milk, and that it is of equal if not greater importance than is chemical composition especially for the milk supply of cities. And there can be no question but that the vitality of the milk is closely associated with the vitality of the animal producing it.

The effect, then, of laws requiring a high percentage of fat will be to put a ban upon the most sturdy, healthy, normal, productive and useful breed of cows the world has ever known, for they are to be found in every country of the globe and probably produce more milk and by-products than all other breeds combined. It will encourage the sale of the milk product of a breed which is neither hardy nor vigorous; which is probably more susceptible to tuberculosis and other diseases, owing partly to the fact that their delicate constitution requires housing more months of the year than any other breed; a breed giving a milk not only entirely unsuited to the purposes of artificial feeding of infants, but possessing excessive fat and other deleterious properties to such a degree that many of the cows of this breed are unable to rear their own calves; a breed originating in a salubrious climate, reared with the tenderest care, and brought to this inclement land to be exposed to conditions unnatural to them or their ancestors and therefore resulting in a milk product which, according to modern standards, is undesirable in many ways.

Many state institutions throughout our commonwealths maintain herds of Holsteins, some of which are among the finest in the land, in the confident belief that it would be impossible to supply such an abundant quantity of highly nourishing milk through the medium of any other breed.

Thomas Morgan Rotch, M.D., the distinguished authority on the diseases of children, speaks as follows regarding the value of the milk of this particular breed: