The value of raw milk

[Guest guest]

Sometime ago on several of these lists I wrote about the value of raw

foods in treating disease and raw milk in particular. I spoke of my

personal experience and my clinical experience with others. My mailbox

was filled with people wanting to know more and a few naysayers as well.

In the midst of all of that I mentioned Dr. J. R Crewe, one of my early

medical heroes and a foremost advocate of medical milk therapy. While

there are several things I would pick umbrage at off the Weston A Price

website, I'm very pleased to see that they have included an article on

their www.realmilk.com website authored by Dr. Crewe. I hope many may

find help from it.

Yours for better health,

Bianca

REAL MILK CURES MANY DISEASES

by J. R. Crewe, MD

The following is an edited version of an article by Dr. J. R. Crewe, of

the Mayo Foundation, forerunner of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN,

published in Certified Milk Magazine, January 1929. We are grateful to

Dr. Ron Schmid, ND of Middlebury, CT for unearthing this fascinating

piece. The “Milk Cure” was the subject of at least two books by other

authors, written subsequently to Dr. Crewe’s work. The milk used was, in

all cases, the only kind of milk available in those days—raw milk from

pasture-fed cows, rich in butterfat. The treatment is a combination of

detoxifying fast and nutrient-dense feeding. Note that Crewe quotes

Osler, author of a standard medical textbook of the day. Thus,

this protocol was an orthodox, accepted therapy in the early 1900s. Today

the Mayo Clinic provides surgery and drug treatments, but nothing as

efficacious and elegant as the Milk Cure.

For fifteen years the writer has employed the certified milk treatment in

various diseases and during the past ten he had a small sanitarium

devoted principally to this treatment. The results obtained in various

types of disease have been so uniformly excellent that one’s conception

of disease and its alleviation is necessarily changed. The method itself

is so simple that it does not greatly interest most doctors and the main

stimulus for its use is from the patients themselves.

To cure disease we should seek to improve elimination, to make better

blood and more blood, to build up the body resistance. The method used

tends to accomplish these things. Blood conditions rapidly improve and

the general condition and resistance is built up and recovery follows.

In several instances, Osler (Principles and Practices of Medicine, by

Osler, MD eighth edition) speaks of milk as being nothing more

than white blood. Milk resembles blood closely and is a useful agent for

improving and making new and better blood. Blood is the chief agent of

metabolism. Milk is recognized in medical literature almost exclusively

as a useful food and is admitted to be a complete food.

The therapy is simple. The patients are put at rest in bed and are given

at half hour intervals small quantities of milk, totalling from five to

ten quarts of milk a day. Most patients are started on three or four

quarts of milk a day and this is usually increased by a pint a day.

Diaphoresis [copious perspiration] is stimulated by hot baths and hot

packs and heat in other forms. A daily enema is given.

The treatment is used in many chronic conditions but chiefly in

tuberculosis, diseases of the nervous system, cardiovascular and renal

conditions, hypertension, and in patients who are underweight, run-down,

etc. Striking results are seen in diseases of the heart and kidneys and

high blood pressure. In cases in which there is marked edema, the results

obtained are surprisingly marked. This is especially striking because

so-called dropsy has never been treated with large quantities of fluid.

With all medication withdrawn, one case lost twenty-six pounds in six

days, huge edema disappearing from the abdomen and legs, with great

relief to the patient. No cathartics or diuretics were given. This

property of milk in edema has been noted in both cardiac and renal cases.

Patients with cardiac disease respond splendidly without medication. In

patients who have been taking digitalis and other stimulants, the drugs

are withdrawn. High blood pressure patients respond splendidly and the

results in most instances are quite lasting. The treatment has been used

successfully in obesity without other alimentation. One patient reduced

from 325 pounds to 284 in two weeks, on four quarts of milk a day, while

her blood pressure was reduced from 220 to 170. Some extremely satisfying

results have been obtained in a few cases of diabetics.

When sick people are limited to a diet containing an excess of vitamins

and all the elements necessary to growth and maintenance, which are

available in milk, they recover rapidly without the use of drugs and

without bringing to bear all the complicated weapons of modern medicine.

Under the head of Treatment in Chronic Gastritis, Osler has said, “A

rigid milk diet should be tried” (Principles and Practices of Medicine,

by Osler, M.D., eighth edition). And quoting from Cheyne,

he wrote, “Milk and sweet sound blood differ in nothing but color: milk

is blood.” Under the heading of treatment in many diseases, it was true

that he had little to say about drugs but did say a good deal about diet

and particularly as in most every instance he recommended large

quantities of milk.

Under chronic Bright’s disease (p 704) he says, “Milk or buttermilk

should constitute for a time, the chief article of food.” Under treatment

of cancer of stomach (p 505), he says many patients do best on milk

alone. Under treatment of rheumatic fever (p 378), he says, “Milk is the

most suitable diet.” With Olser as a background, one need not hesitate to

go a bit farther. In fact, practically all medical men are agreed as to

the value of milk as a food, and as an important part of the diet in the

treatment of many diseases. But as the chief remedy in the treatment of

disease, it is seldom used.

For more than 16 years I have conducted a small sanitarium where milk is

used almost exclusively in the treatment of various diseases. The results

have been so regularly satisfactory that I have naturally become

enthusiastic and interested in this method of treating disease. We used

good Guernsey milk, equal to 700 calories to the quart.

Interestingly, diseases that have no similarity respond equally to this

treatment. For instance, psoriasis clears up beautifully. The improvement

in tuberculosis or nephritis is equally interesting but there is no

similarity in these diseases. I once heard a very distinguished medical

man discussing a case of psoriasis. He said, “This was the worst case of

psoriasis I have ever seen. This boy was literally covered from head to

foot with scales. We put this boy on a milk diet and in less than a month

he had a skin like a baby’s.” To me, this means that there was evidently

some nutritive substance or vitamin or glandular secretion lacking, that

was furnished by the milk.

It is well known that there is no time in the life of practically any

mammal, but especially of the human, when the body is so beautiful and

perfect as during the period when milk is the only food. It will be

admitted that there is no period in life when the body is so perfect as

in infancy, the infant being fed on milk from a healthy mother.

The Arabs are said (Encyclopedia Brittanica) to be the finest race,

physically, in the world. Their diet consists mostly of milk and milk

products with fruits and vegetables, and some meat.

You are all familiar with the writings of Colonel McCarrison, a medical

officer in the British Army. He tells us that for nine years he was

stationed in India in a district in the Himalayan Mountains. He said that

the natives were very fine physically, that they retained a youthful

appearance to advanced age and lived long and that they were very

fertile. During the nine years of his residence there he saw practically

no disease, no cases of malignancy or of abdominal disease. The diet of

these people was simple and consisted principally of vegetables and

fruits and milk and milk products.

Steffanson wrote most interestingly of the Eskimo, who, when

uncontaminated by civilized conditions were hardy and robust. Their diet

of course was almost entirely of meat and fish. He tells us, however,

that the habits of meat-eating people are similar to those of carnivorous

animals. The wolf first attacks the heart and gets the blood and later

eats the glandular organs and viscera, leaving the muscle meats till the

last. The Eskimo does the same thing.

During one expedition Mr. Steffanson and party started on a nine months’

trip over the Arctic ice with only one day’s provisions. All previous

Arctic explorers had said that civilized men could not live in the Arctic

regions without bringing in their supplies. Mr. Steffanson and his party,

during the nine months, were almost never without an abundance of food,

and much of it was eaten frozen and raw. I wish to show from Steffanson’s

experience, first, that it is possible for people to be robust and

maintain good health on various types of food of limited variety. That

the condition common to all types of diet is, that much of the food is

eaten raw. I wish to say here that our very excellent results obtained in

the treatment of disease were had with uncooked food and raw milk.

The experience of seeing many cases of illness improve rapidly on a diet

of raw milk has suggested more and more the feeling that much of modern

disease is due to an increasing departure from simple methods of

preparing plain foods. The treatment of various diseases over a period of

18 years with a practically exclusive milk diet has convinced me

personally that the most important single factor in the cause of disease

and in the resistance to disease is food. I have seen so many instances

of the rapid and marked response to this form of treatment that nothing

could make me believe this is not so.

We have often seen most satisfactory results in the treatment of anemia,

including pernicious anemia, on a milk diet. I have repeatedly seen a

marked reduction in the size of simple and toxic thyroid, with

improvement in the symptoms of the toxic one. In prostatic diseases and

associated conditions, this treatment will achieve rapid and marked

improvement in the infection and in the reduction of the gland and

lessening of obstruction. A professor of surgery in one of our state

universities once said to me, “Since I have used your method in preparing

prostate cases, I have had most excellent results and no mortality.” I

replied that if he had continued the treatment a little longer, he would

not need to operate. All infections of the urinary tract are greatly

improved by this treatment.

An old friend of mine, a woodworker, aged 74, had a marked heart lesion

and complete prostatic obstruction, so that it was necessary to use a

permanent catheter. He had been taking digitalis but this was

discontinued, and he received no medication of any kind. The prostate was

very large and the residual urine very foul. His recovery has been rapid,

and he has been able to work since that time and is now in very good

health at 77 years of age. Another local man was treated six years ago

for a severe chronic winter cough and prostatic disease, which

necessitated his getting up many times at night. He volunteered the

information a few days ago that he had no more trouble with any illness

since that time.

Indeed we had a number of patients who took the treatment for “beauty

treatment.” The tissues become firmer and the general appearance is

markedly improved.

One patient with very advanced cardiac and nephritic disease lost over

thirty pounds of edema in six weeks. One would expect the large

quantities of fluid would increase the edema but the above experience has

been repeated many times in lesser degrees.

Hypertension responds with equal gratification. The blood pressure

improves rapidly. I have never seen such rapid and lasting results by any

other method. One of the patients lived almost exclusively on milk for

more than three years.

About ten years ago a very sick man came to the Sanitarium suffering from

a severe cystitis and nephritis. He was a diabetic. As milk contains

about five percent milk sugar, it was feared that he could not manage

this amount of sugar. But he did manage it, and improved in every way and

in eight weeks was sugar free. My experience with milk diet in diabetes

has been limited, but very interesting. These few patients, only seven or

eight, have been much pleased with the results. Insulin was used for a

time in some of the cases. They all became sugar free, or nearly so,

after from four to ten weeks. From the fact that these patients were able

to use a much more liberal diet than diabetics usually can take [after

the treatment], it would seem to indicate that at least a partial

regeneration of the pancreas is not impossible.

Recently I received a letter from a soldier who was confined in a

government hospital in Arizona [for tuberculosis]. He said a former

patient of mine had induced him to try this method. He said that he had

done so well that a number of the men were also attempting it and he had

written for more definite instructions. He also said that the patients

had to buy their own milk and received no encouragement from the hospital

authorities.

There is a large class of patients who are ill but in whom no definite

organic lesion can be found. These patients are often underweight. They

may consume a fairly large amount of food but they do not gain in weight

or strength. These patients do respond admirably to our system of large

quantities of milk.

The chief fault of the treatment is that it is too simple. Patients

attempt to do it at home, but there are many pitfalls, and it does not

appeal to the modern medical man.

A Campaign for Real Milk is a project of The Weston A. Price Foundation

PMB 106-380, 4200 Wisconsin Ave, NW, Washington DC 20016