How is seven per cent top-milk obtained? 1. By removing the upper eleven ounces or one-third of a quart from poor milk. 2. By removing the upper half from average milk. 3. By removing two-thirds or about twenty-two ounces from rich Jersey milk. As stated before the seven per cent and ten per cent are the two kinds generally used.
If top-milk is treated in this way, is it like the human milk? The proportion of the fluids and solids are about the same, but the elements are different. The curd (albuminous element) is still different in structure and action from the same element in human milk. The curd of human milk when it is met by the gastric juice in the stomach coagulates in minute particles, and the pepsin acts upon this very readily, but the curd of cows' milk being much coarser and firmer coagulates under these conditions, into large hard clots or masses, and these are quite indigestible if the child's stomach is sour from an under amount of acid being present.
[580 MOTHERS' REMEDIES]
How can we prevent this? By adding some bland and nonirritating substance to the milk which will mingle with the particles of curd and separate them until the gastric juice can act upon each separate particle and digest it.
What can we use for this purpose? Barley or oatmeal water or gruel is best.
What is cream? It is the part of the milk containing the most fat.
How is cream now obtained? By skimming after it has stood for twenty-four hours, "gravity cream"; by a separator, and it is then known as "centrifugal cream"; (most of the cream now sold in cities is "centrifugal cream").
How much fat has the usual "gravity cream?" Sixteen to twenty per cent.
How much fat is contained in cream removed from the upper one fifth of a bottle of milk? About sixteen per cent.
How much does the usual centrifugal cream contain? Eighteen to twenty per cent fat.