Abstract
Human milk positive* to Arakawa's reaction is maintained as good milk generally as papers from our laboratory have shown. The Arakawa-negative milk is not only B-avitaminotic, but must contain some poison or poisons as shown by the papers of Asakura, 2) and of Asakura and Osako.3) And I searched for the poison or poisons in the milk.
1. I was able to find a mcthyl glyoxal-like substance in the ether extract of the Arakawa-negative milk.
2. This substance has thus far been unable to identify in the ether extract of the Arakawa-positive milk (=human milk strongly positive to the Arakawa reaction).
3. The methyl glyoxal-like substance in human milk is roughly reversely proportional to the intensity of Arakawa's reaction.
4. If vitamin B is administrated in a large amount to a case secreting milk utterly negative to Arakawa's reaction, the methyl glyoxal-like substance will show a decrease in spite of the fact that it may remain negative to the reaction; in other words, the milk will become less poisonous in spite of the negative reaction. The result coincides with what Asakura, and Asakura and Osako have shown by way of animal experimentation.
