The fatty acids present in human milk

Abstract

In beginning of this thesis an effort was made to find all the available references on the subject of the chemistry of human milk fat in order that a bibliography might be made which would cover all the work done on the subject up to the present time. In order to investigate the methods for separating the fatty acids in butter fat it was found necessary to look up the work that has been done on cow's butter and in most cases to follow the same methods in this work. Compared with what has been done on the butter fat of cow's milk, very little has been done on human milk fat. The fatty acids of cow's butter have been fairly well analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively, and the physical and chemical constants have been determined several times under varying conditions. These determinations have been worked out for various abnormalities due to disease, the feeding of different kinds of food, various degrees of starvation and thirst, etc., etc. The work which has been done on human milk fat includes a few determinations on the physical and chemical constants, a few qualitative determinations, and one or two quantitative results for some of the fatty acids. Almost all of the results differ greatly even among determinations made by the same investigator. The causes for the varying results are taken up under HISTORY. I confined my work to the qualitative determinations, and made a few quantitative determinations where it was possible. These determinations were made only on the fatty acids present as saturated and unsaturated acids.