THE MILK DIET CURE

Throughout history, milk has been considered Nature’s perfect food. Hippocrates recommended the consumption of large quantities of ass’s milk to maintain good health. During the Middle Ages, Arabian physicians prescribed whey (the liquid remaining after milk has been curdled and strained) as a treatment for bladder and kidney stones and other ailments. It would take another 500 years before milk, in the form of the milk diet, would be internationally recognized as an effective treatment and, in some instances, a cure for disease.

For centuries, milk was valued as an essential food for infants and children. By ingesting milk on a regular basis, the young grew strong and healthy. Milk, however, was not the beverage of choice for most adults. Adults preferred to wash down their meals of meat and bread with beer, wine, whisky or hard cider.

In the early 1800s, a significant change took place in the way many people lived. Families left their livestock and farms behind and moved to the cities in search of a better life with more predictable income. What they encountered were sweat shops, over-crowed living quarters and a lack of adequate sanitation facilities. These unhealthy conditions resulted in the rapid spread of contagious diseases, especially tuberculosis. Contaminated water supplies led to epidemics of cholera that killed thousands. Chronic diseases such as diabetes, arthritis, hypertension and various categories of heart and kidney disease ran rampant.

As if all of this was not enough, the worse tragedy was yet to come. The lack of refrigerated transportation made the acquisition of fresh country milk in the cities unpredictable at best. Families were forced to rely on milk from urban dairies. These so called “swill dairies” were usually located adjacent to liquor distilleries. Fed only brewer’s mash or distillery swill, cows in these dairies became weak and diseased. Many of the infants who drank the milk from the city dairies died. By contrast, the infants who remained on the farms and were given milk from healthy cows fed on fresh grass and grains thrived.

As infant mortality within the cities exceeded 50%, government authorities and physicians began to explore what it was about cow’s milk produced on farm dairies that promoted health in infants. They also pondered whether fresh cow’s milk might be useful in helping weak and sick adults to recover their health.

It was around this same time, 1857, that a Russian physician by the name of Inozemtseff published a paper titled “The Milk Cure”. The article described how Dr. Inozemtseff had cured a young man stricken with tuberculosis with a prolonged diet exclusively of milk. The article explained how Inozemtseff had used milk as a medication. Before long, prominent physicians in Germany and England were expounding on the virtues of the milk diet.

Two men came to prominence for advocating for the milk diet in the United States. One was Charles Stanford Porter, a physician who earned his M.D. degree from the College of Medicine, University of the City of New York, in 1893. Dr. Porter was a traditionally trained physician who believed in following strict rules and procedures. The other man was Bernarr Macfadden, known as the “Father of Physical Culture”. Macfadden had a lifelong distrust of physicians and hated organized medicine. Instead, Macfadden taught that the true way to a healthy life was through dietary restriction. While encouraging his followers to “embrace the miracle of milk”, he also believed in the “digestive magic of sand”. “Sand cleans glass bottles, why not the bowels?” he reasoned.

The theory of how the milk diet cured acute and chronic diseases was based on the limited understanding of human physiology that existed in the late 1800s. At the time, the germ theory was a new concept that was not yet universally accepted. Diseases were thought to be the result of an accumulation of poisons or toxins within the various organs, and that these poisons were produced by the incomplete digestion of the food that a patient consumed. Easily digested food, like milk, produced few toxins and passed through the body with relative ease. Foods that were difficult to digest, like meats, white bread and sweets other than citrus fruits, produced many toxins and overwhelmed the organs of elimination resulting in “weak” urine and chronic constipation.

In 1905, Dr. Porter published a book titled “Milk Diet as a Remedy for Chronic Disease”. Over the next 18 years, Porter revised his text eleven times. In 1923, Macfadden also published a book about the milk diet. His book was titled “The Miracle of Milk”. Both Porter and Macfadden reported how they had experienced success in curing hundreds of people suffering from various ailments with a diet consisting exclusively of milk. Although their individual dietary regimens were similar, they were not identical. Dr. Porter’s was much more complex.

Dr. Porter’s therapeutic diet consisted of five elements; an initial fast, complete bed rest, milk, fresh air and warm baths. Exercise was to be avoided until the other stages of the diet had been completed. Macfadden included exercise as a critical part of his diet therapy and did not insist on complete bed rest for his patients.

Both men emphasized the need for adequate room ventilation with cool fresh air and daily warm baths. Each insisted that the water temperature for the baths be just above normal body temperature and never more than 110 degrees.

Neither Porter nor Macfadden were particularly shy about claiming which diseases could be successfully treated with their respective milk diets. A partial list included nervous troubles of all sorts, indigestion, stomach ulcers, uterine prolapse, pimples, boils, eczema, dandruff, anemia, asthma, hay fever, hardening of the arteries, piles (hemorrhoids), lumbago, hives, impotence, gallstones, diabetes, both high and low blood pressure, most heart ailments, diarrhea, constipation, kidney disease and tuberculosis in its early stages. Chances were that if a patient had it, the milk diet could cure it.

The mechanisms of action by which the milk diet regimens cured disease were widely accepted in the early 1900s. It was believed that fasting stopped incomplete digestion and allowed the body time to concentrate cellular toxins. During complete bed rest, body organs recalibrated their metabolic activity and readied the accumulated poisons for elimination. Milk was then introduced in quantity to strengthen the blood and increase its volume. Increased blood flow to the various organs would then facilitate the removal of cellular toxins via urine from the kidneys. The milk also created bulk within the small intestines and the colon. This bulk, in turn, swept poisons from the GI tract into easily passable bowel movements. The warm baths stimulated capillary blood flow to the skin where additional toxins were excreted by the sweat glands. Fresh air, in a combination with deep breathing exercises, flushed poisons from the lungs and encouraged complete oxidation and digestion of the milk. Finally, exercise increased general muscle strength to include the muscles that controlled peristaltic contractions within the colon. This aided in the elimination of toxins which had been absorbed and concentrated in fecal matter.

While Macfadden maintained his own sanatoriums and oversaw the care of some patients there, his book was written primarily for persons who wished to attempt the milk diet cure at home. Porter’s milk diet was better suited for patients who could afford an extended sanatorium stay. In fact, Dr. Porter said that unless the parameters of his milk diet were executed to the letter (not an easy task), it had little chance of bringing about a complete healing success. Among other things, Porter required soft hair mattresses positioned on iron bed frames upon which his patients were confined 24 hours a day. The only exceptions to strict bed rest were for bathroom breaks and a daily 20 minute warm bath. While Porter preferred that his patients stay in screened in porches for ventilation, Macfadden believed that an adequate supply of fresh air could be achieved by simply opening one or two windows in the patient’s bedroom.

There was consensus on the type of milk that was to be used for the milk diet, how much milk was to be taken and how and when the milk should be consumed. Without exception, the best chance of a cure from the milk diet came with the use of fresh sweet raw milk from Holstein cows raised on country farms. It was claimed that this milk contained less butter fat in smaller globules than did milk from either Jersey or Guernsey cows. Less butterfat made digestion of the milk easier and more complete.

The quantity of milk to be drunk differed according to age, gender, weight and the patient’s physical condition, but averaged from 4 to 6 quarts a day. The milk was to be taken slightly cooled, 6 to 8 ounces at a time every half hour for 12 hours a day. The milk was to be sipped slowly, aerated fully and “chewed” thoroughly. This stimulated the flow of saliva that began the oxidation-digestion process in the mouth.

All of this, if conducted correctly, took about 20 minutes every half hour. This left little time for such activities as reading, talking, sewing or sex, all of which were condemned while on the milk diet as energy wasters. The average time spent on the milk diet was six weeks initially, with the recommendation that the full course could be repeated at any time, but at least once a year to assure continued good health. To say that participation in the milk diet cure was a full time activity was certainly not an understatement!

The milk diet did not prove to be the cure-all that Porter and Macfadden touted. It was, however, therapeutic for certain conditions. Milk was rich in potassium, which has been associated with a lower risk of strokes, heart disease and hypertension. The high water content of milk (87%) helped to reduce the formation of kidney stones. Taken in quantity, milk contained enough absorbable iron to correct iron deficiency anemia. And the vitamin B3 (Niacin) in milk was sufficient to prevent the deficiency disease pellagra, which was characterized by dermatitis, diarrhea and mental disturbance.

Of late, the milk diet is making something of a comeback. In an effort to eat healthy and avoid highly processed foods, some people are turning to raw milk as a source of non-animal protein. Where the sale of raw milk is illegal, the law has been circumvented by milk co-ops. In these co-ops, anyone can purchase a partial ownership in a dairy herd and then collect and use the raw milk taken from their own cows. This is not illegal. Although an exclusive diet of milk may not be for everyone, for some it could prove to be an alternate road to good health, just as Porter and Macfadden suggested nearly a hundred years ago.

By Charles Bush in "History Magazine", volume 17, n.5, June/July 2016, Canada, excerpts pp. 24-26. Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.