Los Angeles herald., 1908-03-21
OF WORLD wilde INTEREST
MILK AND PUBLIC HEAL TIN
BY FREDERIC }. HAsklN


of the public health and marine hos
pital service examinations have shown
as high as 307. 500, 900 bacteria in single
cubic centimeter of milk If milk We're
transparent instead of Opaque such a
luxuriant growth would be visible to
the naked eye. Besides being an agent
for the spread CT the germs of typhoid
fever. scarlet fever and diphtheria.
milk also has i'm IL tubereular bacilli.
out of $4,000 cattle tested IN Massachu-
setts there were 10000 which had tuser-
culoss. About 1S per cent of the COWS
from which Washington gets its milk
supply are said to be infected.
Perhaps one-half of the infant NOR
tality in the United States Is duo to tho
use of cows milk. So high is the death
rate among infants that the chances of
new born child surviving a week are,
according to Bergeron, less than thoss
of a man of 90 while its chances of
living a year are less than those of a
man of fourscore. One of the most
beautiful charities I'm New York is the
Nathan Straus fund for the purchase
of pasteurized milk for infants. Mr..
Strau3 started this charity in 1898 by
dispensing 34400 bottles of prepared
milk from one depot. In 1894 It was
Increased tenfold. BY 1906 it had
reached 3142,252 bottles and 1,07S, 405
BldSStS VI JdSltuIiNeu liillhp iHtic btiiik
seventeen stations from which 1t was
dispensed. Prior to the beginning of
this charity the death rate among the
infants during June, July and August
was 1864 per thousand. In 1906 II WAS
only 62.7. The milk is modified after
certain formula and is sent out in bot
ties that will not stand on the end, so
that they cannot be left open. Only
one feeding is put into bottle.
The surgeon general of the United
States public health and marine hos->
pital service has made inquiry as to
the number of infants milk depots in
the United States in cities of $4,000 pop
ulation and upward. He has found that
of the seventy-six cities of that size
there are twenty-one which maintain
such depots. OF these only four have
them maintained at public expense.
In the others the cost is borne by
philanthropic citizens. On1 of the chief
efforts of the public health service now
is to encourage maternal feeding and
to point out the dangers of departing
from natures methoCs.
Essential as pure milk is to the
health of city, 1t is yet next to i'm
possible to have it all pure. The Wash
ington milk supply, for instance, comes
from over 100 dairy farms situated in
the adjacent counties of the states of
Virginia and Maryland. Some of the
cream comes from as far as Pennsyl-
vania and New York. Boston gets
large portion of her milk supply from
distance or from forty to a hundred
miles. The milk for the city of New
York comes from $4,000 different farms
scattered over five states, passes
through 400 creameries and reaches the
city over five different lines of trans
portation. Some of the milk at certain
seasons comes from Canada, and ship
ments of cream arrive daily from Ohio.
One hundred and fifty wholesale deal
ers are engaged in the milk business
and the retail milk stores number 12,-
900. The Caily consumption is 100000
quarts, yet only 5000 quarts of this
are certified as clean milk.
Counting a perfect dairy as rated at
100 points, the average dairy in the
United STAT shows less than sixty
points. Kansas City dairyman is
quoted as saying that the prices of
milk I'm that city are based on the re-
moval of only the worst forms of dirt,
that if the public wanted cleaner milk
they would have TO pay the added cost
of production and that it was shown
that the people were not willing to do
this, since the few dairies approximate
ing ideal conditions and charging a
correspondingly higher price, were not
SO well patronized as might have been
expected
The conclusions reached in the
twenty-odd different papers incorporat-
ed in the book are that at best the
conditions for handling milk cannot
be made perfect. If it were possible to
oil Ia n n fi0n r11ilIx 11oiobt
be kept for weeks instead of days.
But this is impossible in the handling
of a commercial milk supply. More
than half of the milk that reaches the
consumer Is almost day old and is
not clean at all. Pasteurization is not
ram unmixed blessing. While 1t lessons
the dangers of milk drinking for the
time being. the fact that 1t keeps
sweet longer often renders ii fully as
harmful in the end Furthermore, 1t
is said that when the farmer and the
milk hand conclude that the dirt in
the milk is to be cooked and thereby
rendered harmless, they relax their.
care somewhat.
Milk sanitarians may be divided into
| two classes-those who believe that
pasteurization is almost the only feasi-
Bile remedy for bad milk and those who
hope for better things by purifying all
the dairies of the land. To the lay
man, after going through the 500 pages
of the report, it looks as If the day of
really pure milk will come when the
millennium dawns. Yet great progress
has been made In recent years. Clean
| liness is next to godliness" ought to
be the maxim of every milkman.
Nothing that the human race eats or
| drinks is so readily as milk converted
| by careless handling into a dangerous
article. 1t annually lays low it's thou
sands, chiefly because somewhere on
it's voyage from the COW to the con-
| sumner 1t las been improperly handled.
| Rroolylyn drv dock Their bid was 1854