Practical Notes: Syrups. Milk.

BY HANS M. WILDER.

Syrups.—When syrups are made they are generally poured into the-stock bottles or stone jugs while hot, or at least quite warm; the containers are then stoppered and put aside. Now it often happens with many syrups, particularly when the warm weather sets in, that they sour or ferment. This can in a great measure be prevented by giving the filled syrup bottles, etc., a good shaking up when perfectly cold.

The rationale is: When we pour a hot liquid (or, for the matter of that, a hot solid) into a receptacle and stopper, vapor will arise, collect over the surface of the contents and on cooling be thrown down as water, which floats on top of the dense syrup, mixes by diffusion with some of it, and thus forms a weak saccharine solution, which, as may be expected, does not keep very long before it spoils, and eventually spoils the remainder.

By observing the precaution of shaking the containers when cold, the watery layer will mix with the remainder, and thus form a syrup of normal consistence throughout.

Milk.—Although highly beneficial, not only as an article of daily food, but also, for most invalids, physicians are debarred in many instances from its help through the patients' inability of digesting it. Physicians pay generally too little attention to the temperature of the food which their patients take; if milk be warmed, with constant stirring, to 95 to 100°F., it is surprisingly quickly assimilated.

The writer knows, from his own experience, that one pint of milk, of the ordinary temperature, taken at 9 A.M., completely spoils his appetite for the noonday meal, while, when the milk has been warmed to about the temperature of the blood, he gets hungry enough at 11 A.M.

The American Journal of Pharmacy, Vol. 53, 1881, was edited by John M. Maisch.