An historical, scientific, and practical essay on milk, as an article of human sustenance : with a consideration of the effects consequent upon the present unnatural methods of producing it for the supply of large cities / by Robert M. Hartley.

  • Hartley, Robert Milham, 1796-1881.
Date:
1842
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An historical, scientific, and practical essay on milk, as an article of human sustenance : with a consideration of the effects consequent upon the present unnatural methods of producing it for the supply of large cities / by Robert M. Hartley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    inhumanly condemned to subsist chiefly on the dregs of distil- lation, reeking hot from the whisky manufactories. He followed the distribution of the milk as it flowed from these polluted sources to his own family, where he beheld his youngest child rapidly sinking under the effects of this pernicious aliment, whilst the cause of the illness, until then, was unknown'and unsuspected. Enlarging his survey, he ascertained that in this community alone there was more than sixty thousand families, and in these families more than twenty-five thousand children under the age of five years, among whom this impure milk was a staple article of diet. He next examined the bills of mortality in some of the chief cities, extending back his researches as far as authentic data could be obtained, and discovered, that from some cause or causes un- known, the proportion of infant deaths was not only frightfully great, but steadily augmenting. From the year 1814 to 1841, the destruction of infant life had increased from about thirty-two per cent., to more than fifty per cent.; in other words, more than one half ofthe total deaths, occurred among children under the age of five years. This appalling fact, led him to examine the vital statistics of foreign cities, to ascertain to what extent this fatality was general and inseparable from the conditions of a city life; and he learned that in them it was less and diminishing, whilst the reverse was true of our American cities. He then traced the much abused cattle, which in a few months become so diseased as to be ever after unfit for the dairy, to the shambles, where they are slaughtered by thousands ; and to the markets, where the flesh is sold at enormous prices to be eaten by our citizens. He ascertained, moreover, that the breweries and distilleries, in this way, were destroying nearly as much grain created for purposes of sustenance, as would suffice for