There is recorded the case of a doctors child who was advancing toward rickets, and they gave the scientifically selected vitamins for that condition. The baby went right on to a rickets, just the same as iron does not make red blood corpuscles, but where it does help the patient it is the remedy for the indigestion the patient has, and correcting that, they get from the food the things that make red blood corpuscles. And when iron is not the remedy, they find copper is, and then they say, “Well, iron will not work unless copper is with it.” It is all nonsense. Some very beautiful cases of anaemia in my practice have been cured with Natrum muriaticum.
So, I think that before we condemn some things we know to be true and take up some things that are purely experimental, we had better give what we know has worked a good trial first.
DR. BOERICKE: I would like to ask Dr. Underhill if he considers evaporated milk a processed food, to say nothing of irradiated evaporated milk or any of the synthetic milks, such as put out by Meade, Johnson and other firms, and whether he would use those in baby feeding cases. If not, what does he use in baby-feeding cases?.
DR. UNDERHILL: In the first place, synthetic vitamins are a snare and a delusion. We have synthetic Vitamin B1, but it is no substitute for the natural foods containing the essential vitamin. In fact, synthetic vitamins are very deadly and dangerous.
They will apparently stimulate and overcome a condition temporarily, but then, underneath it all, the trouble progresses, and often more rapidly, to fatal termination.
The question arises whether, when the remedy is indicated, like Natrum muriaticum, as it often is, for nutritional derangement, is it better to prescribe the remedy? I would take the latter viewpoint. If the diet is faulty and erroneous, it stands to reason that we should correct it and bring it more in harmony with nature, then prescribe the remedy. We will turn the patient more quickly in the right direction, modify his body chemistry, and we will hold the cure much longer.
As to the question which Dr. Boericke raised regarding evaporated milk, this whole milk problem is an enormous one. In the first place, milk is a food for babies and not adults. Therefore, I think in the main it is not essential for adults to have milk. It has though, in its raw, natural, unprocessed state, certain values. It has good coverage in case one is on a deficient diet. You stand less chance of running deeper into deficiency if fresh, raw milk, unpasteurized, is included.
Among primitive people in all times, fresh, raw milk has been soured as quickly as possible. That caused proliferation of lactic acid bacillus with a protective organism in the milk and prevented, therefore, the benefits of the milk by putrefaction, disease producing bacteria. At the present time we have pasteurized milk, which robs the milk in part of its calcium content and phosphorus content, the two in combination being precipitated in the form of milk snow inside of pasteurizing containers, a snow-white product which shows we have really been “gyped” out of the real values. also vitamin C is weakened and destroyed by heat in the pasteurizing process. Lactic acid bacilli have been destroyed largely by pasteurization.
Evaporated milk undoubtedly does contain some values. I am not questioning that. Nevertheless it is a processed milk, unnatural product, and therefore not of the same value as fresh milk.
Lately we have homogenized milk, which is a further stop in the wrong direction. They are making ice cream of homogenized milk which gives the false impression of richness which is after all not there.
I had as a patient some time ago a veterinarian in Philadelphia, who was head of the laboratory in one the large milk companies in Philadelphia. After I came well enough acquainted with him to propound this question to him, I said, “Doctor, I would like to get the low-down on the question of pasteurized milk versus raw milk. Just as man to man, what is your opinion on the subject?”.
He said, “I will tell you. Professionally, I am 100 per cent for pasteurization. Personally, I wont have a drop of pasteurized milk in my home.” That was really the low-down, he said.
Eugene passed away at his country home on Spring Hill, Tuscarora Township, Bradford County, PA. He had been in ill health for several months. His wife, the former Caroline Davis, whom he had married in Philadelphia in 1910, had passed away in 1961. They spent most of their marriage lives in Swarthmore, PA.
Dr. Underhill was a member of the United Lodge of Theosophy, a member of the Philadelphia County Medical Society, and the Pennsylvania Medical Society. He was also the editor of the Homœopathic Recorder.