An early Prussian study on the composition of milk from 1871

Abstract

Connections between the 2 scientific fields of physiology and dairy science have existed for a very long time-since the 19th century. One possible explanation for this circumstance could have been the necessity for financial support, which might have played a significant role for many theoretical physiologists to conduct studies on dairy products. This study discusses a correspondence written by the physiologist R. Gscheidlen to J. A. Winter, the main editor of the German (previously Saxon) journal "Schmidt's Yearbooks on the Entire Field of Domestic and Foreign Medicine" ("Schmids Jahrbücher der in-und ausländischen gesammten Medicin"). Gscheidlen submitted a review manuscript on the composition of milk to Winter's journal. In that work, which was published later as the first issue's very first article of the first volume (of in total 4 quarterly volumes) in 1871, Gscheidlen mainly refers to Eduard Kemmerich, who later became a pioneer of cattle breeding in Argentine. Therefore, studies on dairy products and on dairy science, although regularly not very significant from a theoretical and physiological point of view, obviously had concrete implications for practical purposes. Furthermore, other parts of Winter's journal, volume 1871, indicate that Gscheidlen tried to connect these studies with his early theoretical works on physiological metabolism. These theoretical studies included experiments that already explored basic principles of the urea cycle from today's point of view. Of course, these works, which were partly carried out on animals, must have been extravagant and expensive. For that reason, it is possible to assume that early dairy science and other scientific fields in Germany around 1870, which were linked to the developing food industry, had a very significant influence on the advances in theoretical metabolism physiology.