Page:Pure milk - a lecture delivered in the lecture room of the exhibition, July 30th, 1884 (IA b28525140).pdf/5

 LONDON, 1884.

By, F.I.C., F.C.S.

milk is the natural food of infants, and in many cases the most appropriate food for invalids, and it may fairly be said to be essential to the growth of a healthy race of men and women. But it is even more than this: milk may be regarded as a model food, and as a complete food. It is a model food because it is nature’s own food, designed for the sustenance of the young of animals, and, as such, it contains and furnishes all the nutritive properties in due proportion required by a growing animal.

It is a complete food, because it contains every element which is necessary for the support of the body and the activity of its functions.

Adults, who are living an active life, do not always require the constituents of food in the exact proportion in which they are present in pure milk, and yet there are few circumstances under which life cannot be sustained on milk, when properly taken, and with due care to ensure its digestion.

The food of man, in fact, of children also, most commonly consists of a compound of at least two or more animal or vegetable substances, the combination of which affords the various elements necessary to meet all the demands of animal life, and there is no other food in use which contains in one article all the essential constituents of food excepting milk.