The food essential to healthy development and growth of every infant mammal, including human infants, is produced for it in its own mother's breasts. The milk of each species differs widely from that of every other, as we shall show later, and each is especially fitted to meet the needs of the young of that species. The infant continues, for some time after birth to feed upon the substance of its mother.

We are prone to take it for granted that man began to feed cow's milk or the milk of other animals to babies shortly after Adam and Eve were kicked out of the Garden of Delight and that he has continued to do so ever since. We may even imagine that the practice is universal. We could hardly make a worse mistake.

We know, for example, that few Chinese and Hindu mothers have cow's milk or the milk of other animals for their babies. We know that the North and South American Indians had no milk animals and their children received no milk after they were weaned from their mother's breasts. In many other parts of the world the same fact holds good.

It may come as a distinct surprise to most of my readers, that the early American colonists made very little use of milk. The Pilgrims landed in Plymouth in 1620. It was not until 1624 that the first cattle were brought over by Gov. Winslow. These increased rapidly and were added to by fresh shipments from England, so that by 1632 no farmer was satisfied to do without a cow; and there was in New England, not only a domestic, but an export demand for the West Indies, which led to breeding for sale. But the market was soon overstocked, and the price of cattle went down from fifteen and twenty pounds to five pounds; and milk was a penny a quart."

This last statement about milk means very little for Albert S. Bolles, from whose Industrial History of the United States (p. 115) the foregoing statement is taken, tells us, on the next page, that cows were seldom milked at this period, being raised principally for their hides, and secondly for meat, only very incidentally for milk.

So far as the record of history can show us, a man by the name of Underwood is the first to have risked the experiment of feeding cow's milk to infants. This was in the year 1793--only 154 years ago. This was before the invention of the rubber nipple and we may well imagine what a fine time he had feeding this calf-food to a human infant.

Prior to that memorable date--1793--if a mother died and left her child to be nursed, this was done by another woman--a wet nurse and not by the cow. Since then, the cow has not only become a foster mother of the American and most of the European portions of the human race, but we have developed the absurd notion that "a baby is never to be weaned." It must have milk, not merely through the period of infancy, as nature designed, but also throughout childhood, adolescence and adult life as well.

Milk is loudly proclaimed the one and only "perfect food" and from every direction we are urged to drink milk. It is the "perfect food" for the infant, the child, the athlete, the office worker, the invalid and for everyone. There is a strong commercial influence back of all this hue and cry about the magic virtues of milk. We need not take too seriously the mouthings of those who are actuated by the profit motive.

Milk (cow's milk) is not the perfect food for either infant or adult. But we have so endowed it with super-potentiality that we even insist on nursing mothers also nursing. A quart a day, and even more, is sometimes prescribed for the nursing mother. This slavish adherence to milk has been brought about as the result of a frame-up between the doctors and the dairymen, of which, the following item taken from the Ice Cream Field, (National Journal), of July, 1927, and entitled "Dairy Council Plans Education Work," is only partial evidence:

"Latest developments in the health education and increasing the use of dairy products in the nation's diet were discussed at the sixth annual summer conference of national and regional dairy council at Buffalo, N. Y., June 11 to 13. Speakers at the conference included M. D. Munn, President; Dr. Charles H. Keene, professor of hygiene, University of Buffalo; Miss Mary E. Spencer, health education specialist, Washington, D. C., Dr. W. W. Peter, associate secretary, American Public Health Association; Dr. H. E. Van Norman, president Dry Milk Institute; Clifford Goldsmith, writer and lecturer; Miss Sally Lucas Joan, health consultant, and officers and trained specialists of the council organization.

"Many new posters, leaflets, exhibits, moving pictures, health stories, plays and other educational means of presenting the Dairy Council story of the importance of the 'protective foods' in the diet were presented and discussed during the conference. An analysis of the type of work being done by the council organization and how it helps the dairy industry was presented by W. P. B. Lockwood, New England Dairy and Food Council, Boston, Mass. Business sessions of the officers and women workers, as well as a special session on publicity methods, completed the conference program.

"'The Dairy Council is reaching the point now,' stated Dr. C. W. Larson, director, 'where its corps of trained workers must devote most of their time to the presentation of interesting and instructive projects and material which can be supplied to schools and colleges, health and welfare organizations and similar groups to be presented by them in their own localities throughout the United States. Formerly, most of our time was spent in school work. Now, that is only one phase of the enlarged activities of the Dairy Council.'"

This is a cold-blooded business affair which raises the cry of health as a means of increasing the profits of the dairying industries and the doctors that are associated with these industries, and which unblushingly labels their propaganda, education.

Milk, is not an "adult food" but is a temporary expediency in the life of the young animal, lasting it until the time that it evolves teeth for independent mastication and is able to secrete digestive juices of a quality and character to enable it to digest the foods it will naturally live on for the remainder of its life .

Cow's milk is not only not a perfect food for the human adult; it is not the best food for the human infant. It is not even the best milk from the lower animals for infants. Instead of talking about the importance of '"protective foods" in the diet, they should devote their "educational (sic) campaign" to telling people of the dangers of the denatured foods. That their campaign is merely an effort to sell more milk and not an effort to tell the people the truth about their present denatured diet gives the whole show away.

It is wholly unnatural for cows to give the large quantities of milk, rich, in fat, as our dairy cows do. By selective breeding and forced feeding, they are induced to give large quantities of milk and to produce this far beyond the normal nursing period for calves.