Salt Content of Woman's Milk in some cases in which its use was not beneficial.

During a period of four successive years there is a. record at the Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, of ninety infants admitted suffering from tetany in a. more or less severe form. Of this number twenty had been breast-fed to date, some of the older infants taking in addition a. milk dilution and sometimes cereal and biscuit. Two others of the ninety had been exclusively breast-fed to within two weeks of admission, and eight more had been breast-fed for a period of six months or longer after birth, though on artificial feeding for a month or more preceding the attack. Thus one-third of the infants with tetany had been breast-fed to date or for a period of six months or more after birth. It seems not unreasonable to conclude either that the mothers' milks were abnormal in composition, or that under adverse conditions normal woman's milk does not afford sufficient protection against tetany. It is customary when breast-fed infants are admitted to the hospital suffering from tetany, or showing marked signs of rickets without tetany, to discontinue breast feeding entirely. Since under these circumstances it is usually a simple matter to obtain a large representative sample of the mother's milk, it seemed advisable to make complete salt analyses of the milk in as many cases as possible in order to learn how nearly these milks showed values within the normal range. As far as possible the milk was collected under the supervision of a nurse in the infant ward, and in the other cases explicit directions for making the collection were given the mother. The aim was to get all the milk that could be expressed from both breasts until a total of twenty ounces or more was obtained, the period of collection not to exceed three days. Beginning and end milkings by themselves were particularly to be avoided. The samples were kept cold until collection was completed, and no milkwasused for analysis in a curdled state or when the cream could not be shaken into a homogeneous mixture with the rest of the milk. Occasionally infants showed other symptoms than those of rickets and tetany which were assumed to be related to their being fed at the breast. This assumption was made because no other explanation was apparent and because usually the symptoms entirely disappeared when the infant was changed on to artificial feeding. In all such cases also, …