With regard to its nutritive value as a food for adults, milk cannot be recommended as the sole article of food, for the following reasons: - In order to get sufficient carbohydrates a very large quantity of milk is required (8 pints). This means that the body is supplied with more fat, protein, and fluid than is necessary, or than can readily be digested. Further, although milk is bulky it does not supply sufficient residue to set up peristalsis, and it is therefore constipating. If combined with a carbohydrate, that element in which it is defective, milk is an excellent food, and if taken with bread a smaller quantity of milk would suffice. A combination of 10 ounces of bread (1 1/2d.) and 1 pint of skimmed milk (1/2d.) may be cited as a practical illustration of a cheap meal, with a fuel value of over 900 calories. In states of illness or during convalescence these objections to a milk dietary largely disappear, and milk at once takes its place as the most useful food.

The chief clinical uses of milk may be summarised as follows: -

(1) In fever, milk acts as a quencher of thirst as well as a food.

(2) Milk, from the large amount of fluid present, acts as a diuretic; it is the main article of food in inflammatory conditions of the kidney.

(3) In patients requiring extra nourishment, milk may be taken with meals in the place of other non-nutritive fluids.

(4) The digestibility of milk is increased by the addition of substances which tend to make a finer clot, such as barley-water; also the administration of some solid food, such as bread.

(5) Milk is of special value in cases of hyperacidity of the stomach and other gastric disorders, since the casein is an efficient neutraliser of the acid. Skimmed milk is here of very special value.

(6) Owing to the lack of residue from this food, milk is of great value in states of catarrh and ulceration of the gastro-intestinal tract.

(7) In patients at rest in bed the bulkiness of milk is no drawback, as not more than 3 or 4 pints are required.

To vary the monotony of a milk diet the following recipes will be found helpful: -

I. Milk Bovril

Make a meat-extract preparation as directed upon the bottles, but use boiling milk instead of water. This quite disguises the taste of the milk.

2. Milk Tea And Milk Coffee

Two teaspoonfuls of tea in a warmed teapot, and pour over it a small quantity of boiling water, about 3 tablespoonfuls. Al'ow to stand for three minutes, then add a pint of boiling milk. Stand another minute, pour off, and strain. Hot milk flavoured with coffee may also be used.

3. Milk Fortified With Starch

Milk, 1 pint. Cornflour, arrowroot, or farina, 2 ounces.

Benger's liquor pancreaticus, I teaspoonful. Mix the cornflour into a thin paste, with a little milk; boil the rest of the milk and pour it upon the mixed cornflour, stirring continually until the whole mass thickens. Add the liquor pancreaticus, stirring continuously until the preparation is the consistence of cream, when it is again boiled for five minutes.

4. Milk And Cinnamon Drink

Boil 1 pint of new milk with sufficient cinnamon stick to flavour it pleasantly; slightly sweeten with sugar. Taken cold, with a teaspoonful of brandy, this is specially valuable as a nutritive drink in diarrhoea.