Life in the Milk: A History of Intravenous Milk Injections

By Joseph Wood Anstett

Throughout medical history, doctors have recognized occasions when there is a potential need for transfusions of blood or blood substitutes.¹ The West’s search for substitutes began in earnest in the 1600s, with substances such as “beer, urine, milk, plant resins, and sheep blood” taken into consideration as possible replacements.² Two centuries later, however, the concept of blood transfusion still remained both novel and experimental.

Alfred François Donné—a nineteenth century pioneer of microscopy, microbiology and the study of blood³—explored milk’s potential uses by injecting it into the veins of dogs and rabbits. Reports that this experiment had produced no negative effects got some clinicians interested in trying out intravenous (IV) milk transfusion on humans. They believed that there were similarities between blood, milk and a milky-white fluid called chyle. Although their view that blood was made out of chyle was erroneous (chyle, made of lymph fluid and fats, actually forms in the small intestine during digestion and travels from there to the blood), physicians wondered whether milk might be a safe blood substitute.

Importantly, these pioneers viewed blood as a living substance, something that “in obedience to laws which govern its origin and death…cannot be for any appreciable time removed from the circulatory condition without undergoing change.” This understanding led most to conclude that any milk used for transfusion had to be milk that likewise had “not parted with life”⁴—in other words, it needed to be perfectly fresh.

Nineteenth-century medical journals went on to publish numerous case reports describing the successful use of IV milk for a wide range of conditions, including anemia, cholera and severe diarrhea, pulmonary and other forms of hemorrhage, kidney disease, typhoid fever, ulcers, wasting diseases such as tuberculosis (TB) and conditions that we would now associate with cancer. However, the literature also documents failures and adverse reactions in both humans and animals, possibly related to poor-quality milk or the use of too much milk. When scientists began to perfect IV saline solutions in the 1880s,⁵ practitioners largely lost interest in IV milk.

“Fresh Living Milk” Saves the Day for a Cholera Patient

In the 1800s, cholera had become a frightening scourge of industrializing cities.⁶ Characterized by severe, rapid-onset diarrhea and sudden depletion of body fluids and salts,⁷ cholera could kill a person within a few hours of symptom onset. As Britannica explains, the “cellular pumping mechanism that controls the movement of water and electrolytes between the intestine and the circulatory system…effectively becomes locked in the ‘on’ position, causing the outflow of enormous quantities of fluid. . . into the intestinal tract.”⁷

Clinicians of the era observed that the blood of cholera patients had unique characteristics (later understood as the result of the severe dehydration and electrolyte imbalances), including being “thick” and lacking viscidity (stickiness or viscosity). They concluded that patients would benefit from new blood or a blood substitute, and fresh milk presented an intriguing option.

In Toronto, two prominent physicians had the opportunity to give IV milk a trial run in July 1854 during a local cholera epidemic. Dr. Edward Mulberry Hodder (1810–1878), born in England, had moved to Canada in 1838 to teach at Trinity College Medical School. Credited as the “father of obstetrics and gynecology” in Ontario, Hodder pioneered the use of carbolic acid as an antiseptic in surgery and childbirth⁸ (see the “From the Archives” article in this issue of Wise Traditions for Dr. Herbert Snow’s thoughts on carbolic acid). Dr. James Bovell, too, was a leading figure in Canadian medical circles, including as a researcher and mentor.⁹ Both doctors were unhappy with the failure of public health authorities to ensure a clean water supply and clean up the filth contributing to cholera.¹⁰

The 1854 epidemic prompted the improvised establishment of a “cholera shed,” which may have been part of a hospital or perhaps a building hastily given “hospital” status to isolate the overload of cholera patients from the healthy. Describing the situation, Bovell wrote, “Wards became overcrowded; the sick had neither utensils nor proper bedding, nor food for their accommodation; and much distress arose.”⁴

At about 10:00 pm on July 9 of that year, Thomas Harrison, a forty-year-old Irish farmer who had immigrated to Canada, developed sudden nausea, a “tendency to fainting” and diarrhea. After first being given medicines that provided no benefit, he was transferred to the cholera shed at 10:00 am the next morning, by which time he was in serious condition: “pale and cadaverous, sunken and cold,” with vomiting, cramps and a weak pulse.⁴ By 1:00 pm, it looked as though Mr. Harrison would soon die.

In the face of Harrison’s distress, Drs. Hodder and Bovell proposed the experimental procedure of transfusing “fresh living milk.” Because the two doctors’ colleagues were worried that the procedure might kill Harrison and stir up unwelcome public attention, Hodder and Bovell delayed their IV intervention “until there could scarcely be a doubt that death was imminent.” Here is how Bovell described that moment:

“At about 3 o’clock the prostration had greatly increased; the man lay on his back, with his eyes sunken, countenance of ashy hue, hands cold, tongue equally so, breath drawn in gasping sighs, and the pulse gone from the wrist. We now, therefore, commenced the operation.”⁴

The procedure involved bringing a cow that happened to be “grazing close at hand” (on lush green summertime grass, no less) to the cholera shed, for the doctors believed it essential to use milk that was full of life. Filling a four-ounce brass syringe, the two physicians slowly injected the milk into the patient’s veins, all the while monitoring his pulse. Hodder later described the dramatic events:

“I ordered a cow to be driven up to the shed, and while she was being milked into a bowl (the temperature of which was raised to about 100° Fahr.) through gauze, I opened a vein in the arm and inserted a tube, and then filled my syringe (also previously warmed), and injected slowly therewith. No perceptible change, either for better or for worse, took place; so after waiting two or three minutes, I again filled the syringe and injected seven ounces more. The effect was magical; in a few minutes the patient expressed himself as feeling better; the vomiting and purging ceased, the pulse returned at the wrist, the surface of the body became warm—in fact, the man rallied, and speedily recovered without a bad symptom.”¹¹

Bovell elaborated:

“[A]lmost simultaneously the eyes responded, the half-closed lids being raised, the lustreless orbs giving utterance to the relief which was being given, while deep and well-drawn inspirations told how readily the lungs responded to the vital tide which now flowed towards them. . . . [T]he voice, which was unearthly before, was clear, though not strong; and whereas, before the operation he was perfectly careless and, indeed, reckless as to his personal safety and the care of his family, almost his earliest thoughts were directed to the welfare of his children and wife.”⁴

Keeping their patient warm with hot water bottles and a turpentine rub, the two doctors gave him small amounts of “strong beef tea whenever he would take it,” along with two egg whites and an ounce of brandy. After getting a “tolerable” night’s sleep, Harrison woke with no further vomiting, diarrhea, pain or cramps. In fact, the diarrhea vanished so precipitously that one doctor gave him a laxative! Six months later, history tells us, Harrison was still alive.

Although the scientific understanding of blood in the 1850s might not have been perfect, the logic in favor of milk as a blood substitute held some truth. Milk is full of white blood cells—including neutrophils, lymphocytes, monocytes, immunoglobulin and epithelial cells—that perform a wide range of immune functions. In reversing Harrison’s diarrhea and contributing to his full recovery, the IV injections of raw milk appear to have strengthened his immune system while supplying the hydration and electrolytes that the depleted man so badly needed.

Other Toronto Transfusions

On July 13, Hodder and Bovell had the opportunity to repeat their success with a nursing mother of four, Irish immigrant Mary Hall. Admitted to the cholera shed with symptoms similar to Harrison’s, Hall initially was given silver nitrate¹² and, every half-hour, beef-tea, brandy and egg; when the next morning found her continuing to experience diarrhea, with an “extremely feeble and quick” pulse, a “countenance pinched and of ghastly hue,” a “cold and pointed” tongue and seeming restless and “careless about her fate,” the two doctors decided to repeat the procedure used to such good effect a few days earlier:

“Two syringes full, equal to 8 oz., of the fresh warm milk from the same cow which afforded the supply to Harrison, were injected into the vein. As soon as the operation was completed, she expressed the greatest relief, and seemed irresistibly impelled to draw deep and frequent inspirations.”⁴

By July 17, a fully recovered Hall was able to return home.

In his report describing these experiences, Bovell explains that he did two further milk transfusions, apparently without Hodder’s help, with patients who again were nearly at the point of death. In both cases, the patients initially seemed to benefit from the transfusion but died within a day. In one case, Bovell describes the woman in question as having “veins…so empty and small, that I was for some time foiled in my endeavours to find one.”⁴

Bovell subsequently fell ill himself and could not continue caring for cholera patients. Mr. John Mackenzie, a medical student credited by Bovell as being extremely competent and diligent, stepped up to help. Mackenzie administered IV milk transfusions to three more patients who arrived in extremis; unfortunately, despite seeming to “revive” posttransfusion, all three died. Bovell’s report mentions in passing that one of them, “a very athletic young man,” was first given calomel¹³ (a toxic mercury compound); it is possible that the others, too, were mercury poisoned before their transfusions.

Considering that all seven patients were in serious condition at the time of transfusion, it is noteworthy that fresh milk saved two out of seven and caused nearly all to experience some visible improvement. Is it possible that more might have survived if the milk had been injected sooner or if enough milk had been injected to provide sufficient rehydration? Notably, Hodder, with two out of three patients surviving, had the best track record, suggesting that he may have used precautions not followed by Bovell or Mackenzie.

Successes and Failures in America

According to the historical documents that I’ve found, no one attempted milk infusions again for about two decades. In 1873, Dr. Joseph Howe, a New York City physician who had read about Hodder’s successes, tried injecting raw goat’s milk into a TB patient who had been unable to eat and was literally dying of starvation.¹⁴ The liquid Howe used, which had been milked about three hours previously and transported by train,¹⁵ did not yield good results. After IV injection of just one and a half ounces, the patient reported vertigo and chest pain and displayed involuntary eye movements, with a renewal of those symptoms after being given three more ounces of milk (“retained at room temperature”) later that day. Although the pulse seemed improved and the man reported feeling better, he died (reports differ on whether he perished the next day or four days later). Howe’s next milk injection recipient (another terminal TB patient) died a mere four hours post-transfusion.

Before trying again with humans, Howe sought to repeat Donné’s experiment, injecting raw milk into dogs; when all seven dogs died, he wondered whether the “excessive volume of milk given to the dogs, rather than the milk itself…killed them.”¹⁴ Other physicians of the day speculated that the failures in humans and animals might be the result of not using fresh milk obtained mere minutes before, as Hodder had done when he conscripted a healthy nearby cow into service. Along those lines, Dr. Eugene Dupuy concluded around the same time that whereas “the intravenous injection of decomposed milk into dogs is uniformly fatal…the same experiment, if practised with perfectly pure and fresh milk, is entirely innocuous.”¹⁵

In 1878, Howe made a third attempt with goat’s milk, intravenously administering four ounces to a woman with advanced pulmonary TB (historically known as “phthisis”) who then reportedly experienced “marked improvement.”¹⁶ However, when Howe subsequently injected human breastmilk into a woman suffering from abscesses on her ribs and vertebrae as well as intestinal inflammation, the patient’s pulse spiked and then became intermittent; in addition, her breathing became “labored and irregular” and then stopped, forcing the team to revive her by artificial respiration.¹⁷ She died ten days later. An autopsy seemed to exonerate the IV milk, instead revealing long-standing intestinal ulcerations, bone necrosis and lung damage from pneumonia; nonetheless, the “unfavorable and alarming symptoms” observed in this case prompted Howe to give up on IV milk. He wrote, “Some have found [transfusion of milk] useful, while others, like myself, consider it a dangerous operation, and one which in no degree possesses the value of blood transfusion.”¹⁷

Another New York City doctor, T. Gaillard Thomas, was an “outspoken advocate of milk transfusion.”¹⁴ In 1875, Thomas adopted the Hodder approach for a thirty-year-old mother who had experienced a severe uterine hemorrhage following the surgical removal of a very large tumor four days prior. At the point when Thomas made the decision to try an IV of “pure, fresh milk,” the woman “appeared to be dying from sheer exhaustion.” He was able to find an Alderney cow (a now-extinct cross-breed of Guernseys and Jerseys) and reported:

“[The] young and healthy cow was driven into the yard, a pitcher with gauze tied over its top was placed in a bucket of warm water, the vein was exposed, and the cow milked at the moment the fluid was needed….The first effect which evidenced itself did so after about three ounces had been injected. Then the pulse became so rapid and weak that Dr. Mitchell…could scarcely detect it. The patient declared that she felt as if her head would burst, and seemed greatly overcome. I went on slowly, however, transfusing the fluid until [eight and a half ounces] had been reached; she was then left perfectly quiet….[T]oward midnight the patient fell into a quiet sleep….The patient steadily progressed to complete recovery.”¹⁸

Thomas’s second patient was a twenty-two-year-old woman with a very large and challenging ovarian tumor who experienced numerous complications and setbacks in the three weeks following its surgical removal. When Thomas observed her to be close to death, he decided to once again try IV milk, obtaining with “great difficulty…a cow from the stable of a gentleman living a mile and a half away,” which “was driven to the door of the pavilion in which the patient lay.” In this instance, five IV injections of milk over a six-day period were unable to vanquish the woman’s incurable “morbid state”; however, Thomas credited the milk with giving the patient—who he initially expected to die within a few hours—a nearly week-long “reprieve.”

In a third case, Thomas injected milk into a woman who again had a large ovarian tumor, but because she was hemorrhaging severely, she died fourteen hours later. Thomas alluded to having performed four additional IV milk transfusions (for a total of seven) but did not provide details.

Based on his success with the first woman—about whom Thomas conservatively stated that while “he would not positively assert that the transfusion of milk saved the life of the patient,” it was “his firm conviction…that it did”¹⁹—and referencing the reported successes of other physicians, Thomas predicted a “brilliant and useful future” for IV milk (see sidebar for a summary of his observations).

In the late 1870s, Dr. Charles T. Hunter performed IV milk transfusions on four patients, two with severe anemia and two with typhoid fever; only one survived. That patient, a thirty-two-year-old woman with “extreme anemia” and “spinal irritability,” received three separate injections of “fresh-drawn” milk heated to 100F°. Although she experienced violent symptoms in response to the first injection (including labored breathing, a variable pulse, chills, hives, “capillary congestion of the face and surface of the body,” bulging eyes, “turgid” lips and “the whole expression wild and alarming”), the medical team administered two more infusions on Days Seven and Twenty. The side effects—the same ones plus some new ones such as headache, nausea, vomiting, cramping and pain—proved temporary, and the woman ended up making a full recovery.²⁰

Hunter’s second anemia patient—a thirty-two-year-old sailor who received three infusions over a two-week period—also experienced severe side effects and only temporary improvement before dying. In this instance, Hunter humbly concluded that the operation had probably “hastened the death of the patient,” but he remained favorably disposed toward IV milk as a last resort in “cases of hemorrhage and great debility.”²¹

Without full information about the entire set of interventions performed on these patients, it is difficult to draw conclusions about whether the milk influenced the fatal outcomes, and an 1879 report about Hunter’s first two cases makes precisely this point. That report ventures the opinion that the side effects might have been an adverse reaction to quinine (both patients received repeat doses of quinine as well as morphine) rather than to the milk.

Both an Art and a Science

Respected Irish surgeon Austin Meldon, based at the Jervis Street Hospital in Dublin, was by far the most successful physician to use IV milk transfusion, performing the procedure thirty-two times with mostly favorable results.¹⁶ When he tallied twenty of his cases, nine of twelve patients with phthisis recovered, as did all four with pernicious anemia, both patients with exhaustion from hemorrhage and one of two patients recovering from typhoid fever.²² As of 1881, Meldon was urging his fellow professionals to give IV milk transfusions a “fair trial,” stating that the procedure seemed “to have fallen into unmerited disrepute” both in the UK and America.¹⁶

In only one early case (a thirty-year-old man with typhoid fever) did Meldon’s intervention elicit immediate and dramatic symptoms similar to those seen in Hunter’s second case, while injecting a larger quantity of milk (ten ounces) than Meldon later came to believe was optimal: “During the injection the pulse increased in force, the patient complained of great cold, and his face became of a dusky hue. No sooner had the operation been finished than the respiration became very much obstructed, the patient gasping for breath, and the fingers, feet, and lips became cold and livid.” By that evening, the patient had significantly improved and continued to strengthen over the coming days. Two and a half weeks later, however, he showed signs of regressing; after the patient rather reluctantly acquiesced to a second transfusion, he died within a few hours.

Like Hodder and others, Meldon came to believe that the properties of the milk were important, and he seems to have mostly gotten it right. Most notable was his revelation that the milk, ideally, should have the same pH level as the blood. (A pH of 7.0 is neutral, values below 7.0 are more acidic, and values above 7.0 are more alkaline.) Normal blood pH is in the range of 7.35 to 7.45. Meldon said,

“Some deaths have occurred during or immediately after the operation, but in these cases the milk was either acid or kept for too long a time, or too large a quantity had been injected. The milk of any animal kept in confinement is slightly acid even when it leaves the udder, and as the blood will not tolerate the presence of an acid, it is not to be wondered at that very unpleasant symptoms often developed when milk in that state has been injected.”

Dr. Abraham Jacobi, known as the founder of pediatrics, shared Meldon’s perspective on the dangers of acidity and seems to have been one of the rare medical professionals to recognize that milk from grass-fed cows was “naturally alkaline.” On the topic of IV milk transfusion (which he did not practice himself), a report summarizing comments by Jacobi noted:

“One reason of the bad effect of milk injections, [Jacobi] thought, was that they might be acid; and he had found that cows were liable to have acid milk in their udders, due probably to their habits or food. It was important that the milk be tested with litmus before being used, as the injection must not only be not acid, but be alkaline.”²³

In one of Meldon’s successful cases, he brought a goat directly into the bedroom of a patient with wasting disease who was bleeding from the lungs and expected to die; he did not allow the goat to be milked until the tube had been inserted into the patient’s vein and he had tested the milk. When testing revealed the milk to be acidic, Meldon added ten grains of carbonate of ammonia to the ten ounces of milk before beginning transfusion. There were no side effects, and the patient “materially improved.” He began to recommend that carbonate of ammonia routinely be added to injected milk to ensure alkalinity.

In an analysis of twenty-two published cases of IV milk transfusion, Meldon grouped the cases into four categories, with the majority (82 percent) falling into the first two: (1) those in which the operation cured the disease; (2) those in which the operation prolonged life; (3) those in which the operation was productive of neither good nor evil; and (4) those in which the operation, in all probability, shortened life.

The Sooner, the Better

In an 1878 Philadelphia medical school lecture, a Dr. John H. Brinton compared blood transfusion and IV milk transfusion, recommending in either case that transfusion be “done early, and before the patient is in a moribund condition.”²⁴ Citing the “great percentage of deaths” that blood transfusions of the era were causing, the “advantages claimed for milk” (such as the elimination of coagulation risks) and the probability of “excellent” outcomes when undertaking IV milk transfusions in a timely manner, Brinton favorably concluded:

“As far as my own practice is concerned, I think that, in future, I shall try the intravenous injection of milk in preference to the transfusion of blood. I have transfused a great many patients. . . and my results have been very far from reassuring. I think the proposed intravenous injection of milk offers us much better results, judging from the cases published….The main obstacle to complete cure. . . thus far has been the very late period of the disease at which the injection has been attempted. Though the exact rationale of the action of milk, thus introduced, upon the system has not been satisfactorily shown, I think this new operation will, in a few years, have entirely superseded the transfusion of blood.”

Determinants of Success

In response to the adverse effects observed by American and British practitioners, Meldon initially proposed that the symptoms could be mitigated by injecting no more than four ounces of milk at one time; a couple of years later, he revised his recommendation upward to no more than six ounces. Other IV milk proponents such as Thomas thought that no more than eight ounces of milk should be injected at one time. A German doctor argued that injection of large quantities of milk into animals “invariably led to the formation of pulmonary emboli.”¹⁴ On the other hand, Hodder uneventfully administered larger doses of milk to his cholera shed patients—including Harrison, who after receiving twelve ounces experienced clear and immediate improvement and no negative side effects.

The generally positive results obtained by Hodder and Meldon, on the one hand, versus the more problematic results of doctors like Hunter and Howe raise interesting questions about the variables that most influenced IV milk transfusion outcomes. Based on my reading of various case reports, I believe the most significant factors probably included:

• The type of disease treated
• The baseline condition of the patient
• Other factors related to their care (such as the concurrent administration of substances like silver nitrate, calomel, quinine and morphine)
• The amount of milk injected
• The way the milk was handled
• The amount of time that elapsed between milking and injection
  Factors specific to the practice of injection (e.g., sterility and equipment)
• The quality of the milk

Both ancient wisdom and modern science solidly confirm that milk from grass-fed cows is nutritionally superior and has more “life” and “health” than milk from grain-fed cows. Milk from grass-fed ruminants also has a higher pH,²⁵ which makes it more compatible with blood. Although the historical documents provide almost no information about the animals that supplied IV milk, we know that the Toronto cow who helped Harrison recover was “grazing close at hand,” which means that the cow was eating grass at least on the day of the transfusion. Although this does not prove that the cow was 100 percent grass-fed in the prior weeks, considering Toronto’s climate, geography and culture, it seems likely that in general, the area’s cows were grass-fed, especially in the summer. At the time, Toronto had a population of just thirty thousand and was surrounded by forests and wilderness areas.

It is also worth mentioning that in the Toronto region, June and July are the rainiest months, and the first milk transfusion was on July 10. This would mean that the cow was probably eating fast-growing green grass, which has higher levels of chlorophyll, folate and other nutrients than grass during dry periods, making it ideal for the production of high quality milk. The nutrient profile of milk from cows grazing on grass growing in poor soil or eating dry grass, hay or alfalfa will be lower. As for the milk used by Meldon in his many successful cases, he wrote in 1881, “In any place, whether it be town or country, [milk] is easily procured within a few minutes, and with proper precautions the operation is devoid of danger.”²² In the context of the Dublin of that era (with a population of around six hundred fifty-three thousand), we don’t know what the quality of that “easily procured” milk might have been, especially because he also referred to “animals kept in confinement,” but we do know that he preferred and “invariably used” goat’s milk because it was “much more easy to bring that animal in close proximity to the patient, thus avoiding any unnecessary delay between milking and the injection.”²² We have all seen beautiful photos of Ireland’s rolling green hills, so perhaps the local goats and cows had access to at least some grass and hay.

In 1870, New York City’s population of nearly a million was almost four times larger than that of Dublin. How did a city of that size provision its residents with milk when there was not yet refrigeration and the only forms of transportation were horses, railroads and boats? There were two options. The first was to keep cows and goats inside the city, but without large fields of green grass, the animals had to be kept in barns and stables and given external feed. The second option was to transport milk from dairy farms outside the city. However, dairy farming had already begun shifting away from the small family farm to bigger farms that kept cows in confinement and fed them an unnatural diet. In The Raw Truth about Milk,²⁶ William Campbell Douglass II, MD, says about nineteenth-century New York City:

“Cows in the late 1800s were fed on garbage. The Commissioner of the New York State Health Department. . . reported that cows were milked in a mixture of manure and mud, dust, dirt, filth, and disease—germs were as much the total product that people drank as was the milk itself. On farms, pails that were used to carry slop to the pigs were also used to convey milk to human consumers.”

When cows are grain- and soy-fed (sometimes supplemented by human food waste such as overripe fruit), deprived of access to clean water and sunshine, and milked and handled in unsanitary conditions, it stands to reason that the nutritional profile of the milk will be much lower. Although we don’t have proof that the cows that supplied milk to Drs. Howe, Thomas and Hunter were not grass-fed, it seems unlikely. If we assume that the cows in 1850s Toronto provided the best milk, the goats and cows in 1870s Ireland offered the second-best milk and the cows in 1870s New York produced the worst milk, this fact matches up to the presence and severity of side effects and the success rate of the IV milk transfusions.

In the vast majority of milk injections, doctors in Canada, America and the UK seem to have preferred to use raw milk (then called “fresh milk”). This is evident in the case reports that describe cows and goats being milked on the spot. Boiled and strained milk appears to have been the exception rather than the rule, as in two of Meldon’s successful cases when fresh milk was unavailable. A London surgeon wrote in 1885 that IV injections of both “fresh milk in small quantities, or of milk boiled after standing” were “harmless” but warned, “it is most dangerous to employ ordinary milk not so boiled, and the ordinary London milk is especially deleterious.”¹⁵ In an 1899 paper objecting to the practice of boiling milk, the author noted that boiled milk had significant nutritional disadvantages: “The continuous use of milk sterilized by heat by infants leads to a large number of cases of impaired digestion and nutrition, anemia, rhachitis and scurvy, and in any case a predisposition to any and all infections.”²⁷

The Decline of IV Milk Transfusions

Interest in IV milk transfusions seems to have declined in the 1880s, with the last major article published in 1885. My research suggests that physicians abandoned the practice prematurely, never allowing it to reach its full potential. Any new procedure needs an adequate trial-and-error phase before it is perfected, and IV milk injections do not appear to have received a fair trial. That is too bad, because IV milk transfusions may have offered unique benefits not provided by saline solutions or blood transfusions, including immune system support and the ability to cure severe diarrhea.

The rising popularity of isotonic saline solutions was probably the main reason that physicians lost interest in IV milk (and they likely assumed that saline solutions offered benefits equivalent to IV milk injections), but there were also other reasons:

• Dr. Thomas described “violent prejudice and opposition in the mind of the hearer,” and Dr. Meldon noted that some objected that milk was “unphysiological”; apparently, the idea of injecting milk into the blood just didn’t sound right to some doctors.
• When poor-quality milk was used, the serious side effects and failures that resulted gave the procedure a bad name.
• Physicians considered milk to be a blood substitute, but it wasn’t.
• IV milk was less convenient.
• As the medical community became more aware of the dangers of contaminated milk (due to unsavory industrial dairy practices), doctors became less willing to consider IV milk injections.
• Toward the end of the nineteenth century, scientists discovered that fresh milk was not sterile but contained live bacteria. This, too, would have make doctors less open to injecting milk.

On the other hand, the physicians who witnessed successful outcomes remained IV milk proponents. Meldon frankly stated, for example, “I have made up my mind that I will not allow any patients under my care to die of exhaustion without an attempt to save them by the intravenous injection of milk.”²⁸

Final Words

Dr. Hodder may have been wrong in some of his assumptions about the similarities between blood and milk, but he was correct to assume that milk, like blood, had “life.” As Dr. Weston A. Price once documented, the isolated residents of the Swiss Alps knew all about the “life” in milk and had rituals to honor and celebrate the life in milk and butter when cows were eating fast-growing summer grass. The Maasai, too, knew about the life in milk and insisted that would-be parents (both mothers and fathers-to-be) drink the milk of cows eating the fast-growing green grass of springtime. Dr. Price transformed the lives of some poor and malnourished students in America with nutrition that included “high vitamin butter.”

When modern man began to ignore this wisdom and started embracing “modern” farming techniques, he encountered “death” in the milk. Uncaring industrial dairies and greedy businessmen took advantage of the desire for cheap milk and produced contaminated products that, sadly, often killed babies. When pasteurization became the norm, it may have solved these overt problems of contamination, but it also ensured that there would no longer be any “life” or “health” in the milk. Even if we no longer inject milk, we need good, healthy raw milk, butter and cheese from pastured cows and goats eating healthy, species-appropriate food. This allows milk to remain one of nature’s most perfect foods, with superior nutrition and amazing healing and health-giving properties.

About the Author

Joe Anstett was born in the USA, but a trip to Peru in 2003 changed his life. He now lives in Peru with his Peruvian wife (Ruth) and a 15-year-old son (David). In his early life, Joe would experience severe fatigue and brain fog except after eating a really good meal. This led him on a lifelong quest to find answers, many of which came from the works of Dr. Weston A. Price. Joe currently writes a blog on the health benefits of strontium (a mineral similar to calcium) and its potential benefits to inflammation, mitochondria problems and chronic pain. joeanstett.substack.com.

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SIDEBAR:

Dr. T. Gaillard Thomas: A Fan of IV Milk

In 1878, New York doctor T. Gaillard Thomas summed up his opinions18 about the merits and how-to’s of IV milk (which he referred to as “intra-venous lacteal injection”) as follows [slightly edited for brevity]:

1. The injection of milk…in place of blood is a perfectly feasible, safe, and legitimate procedure.

2. [N]one but milk removed from a healthy cow within a few minutes of the injection should be employed. Decomposed milk is poisonous.

3. A glass funnel, with a rubber tube attached to it, ending in a very small canula, is better, safe, and more attainable than a more elaborate apparatus, which is apt, in spite of all precautions, to admit air to the circulation.

4. The intra-venous injection of milk is infinitely easier than the transfusion of blood.

5. The injection of milk, like that of blood, is commonly followed by a chill, and rapid and marked rise of temperature; then all subsides, and great improvement shows itself in the patient’s condition.

6. I would not limit lacteal injections to cases prostrated by haemorrhage, but would employ it in disorders which greatly depreciate the blood, as Asiatic cholera, pernicious anaemia, typhoid fever, etc., and as a substitute for diseased blood in certain affections.

7. Not more than eight ounces of milk should be injected at one operation.

8. [I]f milk answers, not as good, but nearly as good, a purpose as blood…its use will create a new era in this most interesting department of medicine.

This article was published in the Summer 2025 issue of Wise Traditions in Food, Farming, and the Healing Arts, the quarterly journal of the Weston A. Price Foundation. Become a member today to begin receiving this valuable resource by mail.