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Lactose and its Utilization: A Review

Research Laboratories, Bureau of Dairy Industry, Agricultural Research Administration, United States Department of Agriculture

ABSTRACT

INTRODUCTION

For thousands of years previous to the seventeenth century, milk was considered as having only three components, since it was common practice to remove fat and curd, either separately or together, thus leaving a third substance, whey. Whey, or serum, appears to have been used in considerable quantities by physicians of the time of Hippocrates and Galen and through the middle ages without realization that its effects were due chiefly to one specific component (8).

The first record of the isolation of the "essential salt of serum" was published in 1633 by Bartolettus (3, 11, 15), who in 1619 had written of milk as composed only of fat, serum and curd (2). Ettmüller, in 1688 (5), published improvements on Bartolettus' process of evaporation and included the purification of the crude lactose by recrystallization.

During the eighteenth century, lactose became a commercial commodity (1, 7, 10), its use being principally in medicine in place of the whey formerly used (4, 6, 8, 12, 13).