Koumiss, or fermented mare's milk, and its uses in the treatment and cure of pulmonary consumption and other wasting diseases : with an appendix on the best methods of fermenting cow's milk.

  • Carrick, George L.
Date:
1881
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Koumiss, or fermented mare's milk, and its uses in the treatment and cure of pulmonary consumption and other wasting diseases : with an appendix on the best methods of fermenting cow's milk. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    discountenancing the spread of the employment of fermented mare’s milk. Thus the nomads who adopted Christianity seemed at the same time to imbibe an unreasonable dislike, at times amounting to a fanatical hatred, to the use of horse-flesh or mare’s milk. “ Those who are Christians among them ” (i.e., the nomads), writes William de Eubruquis in the thirteenth century—“ as, viz., the Russians, Greeks, and Albanians—will in no case drink thereof [koumiss] ; yea, they consider themselves no Chris- tians after they have once drunk it.”1 The nomads, on the other hand, who embraced Mohammedanism, retain to the present day as great an attachment to, and veneration for, the horse as their heathen forefathers did. Indeed, from the writings of Eubruquis and Marco Polo, it would appear that the hordes of Western and Central Asia, with Kublai Khan at their head, were not averse in the thirteenth century to adopt Christianity, and that this was not accomplished simply owing to the then 1 ‘ Itinerarium fratris Willielmi de Eubruquis de ordine fratrum minorum Galli, anno gratiae 1253 ad partes Orientates — in the Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries,’ &c., &c. London : 1599. New ed., 1809. Yol. i.—Hakluyt’s Col- lection. “Christiani enim Ruteni, Graeci, Alani qui sunt inter eos, qui volunt stricte custodire legem suam, non bibunt illud (cosmos): Imo non reputant se Christianos, postquam biberunt,” p. 88.