Omit breakfast. Begin about 9:30 taking an ordinary glassful of fresh, cool milk every twenty or thirty minutes, until about one and one-half quarts have been consumed. After two or three hours, repeat the same process until about two quarts more have been taken. With each quart of milk, from three to four heaping dessert-spoonfuls of clean, wheat bran should be taken, in thin cream or rich milk. At noon and at evening a few tablespoonfuls of coarse cereal (wheat or rye flakes), might be eaten. They should be masticated thoroughly, and eaten with nuts and a limited quantity of cream. Under this regimen I have known the most severe cases of constipation to yield readily, and the patient to make a gain in weight of half a pound daily for a period of from twenty to thirty days. If the appetite should rebel against taking milk in this quantity, the amount should be reduced, and a cupful of soaked evaporated apricots taken at night just before retiring, and in the morning, just after rising.
When milk is taken for the purpose of counteracting a congested condition of the bowels, or an irritated condition of the mucous membrane of the stomach, it should be combined with the fewest possible things--one coarse cereal only will give the best results. A large quantity of milk, three and one-half to four quarts taken daily, as above directed, will act as a laxative, while a small quantity will have a tendency toward constipation.
The old method of adulterating milk with water has very largely gone out of practise, owing to the surveillance of city authorities, and the passing of laws that fix legal standards, which require milk to contain a certain percentage of fats and total solids.
The chief form of criminal tampering with milk has been the use of preservatives to prevent souring. Formaldehyde has been used very extensively for this purpose. Formaldehyde is a poison, destructive to all cell life, and has probably been the cause of more actual deaths than any other form of food adulteration.
Pasteurization, which takes its name from Pasteur, the French bacteriologist, is merely a process of heating milk to about 170 degrees Fahrenheit for the purpose of destroying possible dis-ease germs, and the bacteria that produce fermentation. In this process the milk is not allowed to come to a boil for the reason that boiled milk is rather "dead" or distasteful, and would readily be detected by the public. It is quite evident that any method of Pasteurization, which would kill bacteria, would also cause coagulation of the protoplasm and the albumin of the milk, and render it much less nutritious, and much more difficult to digest.