Koumiss, or, Fermented mare's milk : and its uses in the treatment and cure of pulmonary consumption and other wasting diseases : with an appendix on the best methods of fermenting cow's milk / by George L. Carrick.

Date:
1881
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Koumiss, or, Fermented mare's milk : and its uses in the treatment and cure of pulmonary consumption and other wasting diseases : with an appendix on the best methods of fermenting cow's milk / by George L. Carrick. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    unable, after a careful perusal of his works, to find anything answering to a description of koumiss. ^ Tor nearly five hundred years after these bold travellers wrote, no mention of koumiss, so far as I am aware, is to be met with in European literature ; and it is only towards the end of the eighteenth cen- tury that it is again brought into notice. Thus Strah- lenberg ^ was the first, after De Eubruquis, to give a description of the preparation of koumiss; but his method, although borrowed from, and said to have been practised by, the Kalmucks, most probably ended in failure. Neumann ,3 a German, and Vol- telen,* a Dutch chemist, proved equally unsuccessful in their attempts to explain the nature and causes of fermentation in mare's milk. Pallas, ^ while mentioning koumiss in his travels, also states that the Tartars during winter, when mare's milk fails them, prepare a wine from cow's. Gmelin gives an account of the distillation by the nomads of a spirit 1 I consulted two different Latin translations of Al Eliazis—the one in the Imperial Library, the other at the Imperial Medico- Chirurgical Academy of St Petersburg. 2 Beschreibung des Russischen Eeichs, p. 319. 3 Chera. Experimental, t. i. part 2, p. 18. •» Observat. de lacte humano cum asiuino et ovillo comparato, p. 54. Physicalisch. licise durch cinige Proviutzen des Russischen Reichs, t. i. p. 316.