MILK FOR BABES. 493 



would be destroyed by this temperature, and recommended such, a 

 process for their destruction and for the preservation of foods. 

 Thirty years ago Liebig said that by scalding milk once a day it 

 could be kept indefinitely, and many a housewife, before and 

 since, has put the same fact into practice. The process is new 

 only in name the discovery lies principally in its application 

 experiment having shown that the application of 150 F. for 

 thirty minutes Avill destroy the Bacillus tuberculosis with cer- 

 tainty, and many germs that are likely to be found in reasonably 

 pure milk, which, Avith ordinary precaution, will remain sweet for 

 several days. 



There is a good deal in a name, and it is to be hoped that 

 " Pasteurized " milk will receive as cordial a welcome as was given 

 to " sterilized " milk. 



Generally, new ideas are received with some conservatism and 

 are subjected to tests in expert hands before being adopted by the 

 public ; but the need was great, and it is seldom indeed that any- 

 thing has had the benefit of so wide a trial and so immediate an 

 acceptance as this idea of sterilization of milk. Benevolent per- 

 sons opened dispensaries to give it to the poor, who, jumping to 

 the conclusion that it was " exactly like mothers' milk " and had 

 wondrously valuable qualities, failed frequently to see the true 

 purpose of the work. Few stopped to inquire what sterilized milk 

 really was, and directions given for its use were rarely followed. 



The fact that milk, when subjected sujBficiently to a high tem- 

 perature, can be kept unchanged for an indefinite length of time, 

 while of interest from a scientific standpoint, is of no practical 

 interest to consumers, except upon long journeys, as it has been 

 conclusively shown that for ordinary usage Pasteurization should 

 be done daily. It is generally conceded that pure milk will save 

 much infant mortality. The fact that thousands of children 

 especially infants die every year from want of care in the prep- 

 aration of their food is underestimated by many. At one of the 

 meetings of the Philadelphia Board of Health, Dr. Shakespeare 

 said, in his report, that milk of poor and unwholesome quality is 

 originally and directly responsible for thousands of deaths annu- 

 ally in that city alone, not to speak of the sickness from this ori- 

 gin which is not fatal. To this category, he declares, certainly 

 belong most deaths from cholera infantum, infantile tubercu- 

 losis, many of the deaths from acute diarrhoea, from typhoid 

 fever, and some of the deaths from diphtheria and scarlet fever. 



Dr. Chapin says that of six hundred infants whose cases were 

 studied, nearly all the troubles were acquired and not hereditary. 

 ^' While a tendency to constitutional disease may be inherited, it 

 is the bad surroundings and faulty conditions of life that power- 

 fully predispose to illness " poverty and ignorance being the 



