Observations on London milk : showing its unhealthy character, and poisonous adulterations : with remarks on the food of the cows, their pestilential places of confinement, with suggestions for remedying the evil / by H. Hodson Rugg.

  • Rugg, Henry Hodson.
Date:
[1850?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations on London milk : showing its unhealthy character, and poisonous adulterations : with remarks on the food of the cows, their pestilential places of confinement, with suggestions for remedying the evil / by H. Hodson Rugg. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    milk. The more usual substances employed for this purpose are water_, flour, starch, chalk, and the brains of sheep. Mr. Gulliver, surgeon of the Royal Horse Guards Blue, informs me that he also has found brains in the London milk through the agency of the microscope; indeed so peculiar is the London milk, that he can tell it by the smell. With respect to these brains, they are not always sheep^s brains that they procure for this purpose, for, generally speaking, they are rather scarce in the market (the poor buying them with the ‘‘ head and pluck^^ of that useful animal) ; consequently they are seldom got, I -am informed, until they ai’e rendered unsaleable for any other purpose, by being considerably advanced in a state of putre- faction. When they cannot procure sheep’s brains, they get those of the ox or cow, and even those from those hot-beds of disease, &c. the knackers’ yards. The way they use them for this detestable purpose is by rubbing them up with their hands (which are not the cleanest one would wish to see) with some warm water, and a white milky-looking emulsion is the result. This is stirred up with the quantity of water* which they intend to add to the milk. These brains not only * It is qiioted even by foreign writers, as a fair joke against the dairy establishments of our large towns, that, among the advantages possessed by one which was advertised for sale, much stress was laid upon a never-failing pump. Sec // Laife e i suoi ProdotU, p. 67.