152 AGRICULTURE OF MAINE. 



Ill spite of its high food value milk does not form any large 

 part of the diet of the average adult person. Milk forms the 

 main article of food of two classes of persons, i. e., the sick 

 and our children. In both of these cases the milk is usually 

 taken in its raw and uncooked condition. Alilk furnishes a fine 

 ground for all kinds of bacteria to grow in. Bacteria introduced 

 into milk do not die out as they do in water. They continue to 

 .multiply the longer they remain in the milk. In other words, a 

 contaminated milk increases its contamination hour by hour; 

 it gives no visible evidence of this increased contamination, and 

 it forms the main article of food of that class of our population 

 which is least able to stand anything but the purest of food. 

 The easiest contaminated, and the most commonly contaminated 

 of our foods, from a bacterial standpoint, forms the principal 

 article of diet of that class of our population whose powers of 

 resisting disease are the least. 



The following figures, from the 1910 Report of the Massa- 

 chusetts Department of Agriculture, are instructive. It is esti- 

 mated that there are one and a half million children in this 

 country under one year of age, and that one million of them are, 

 for one reason or another, dependent either wholly or in part 

 upon cow's milk for their food. German statistics show the 

 following death rates per thousand of children fed on various 

 foods : — 



Fed on mother's milk 7.4 



Fed on mother's and cow's milk 21.4 



Fed on cow's milk 42.1 



This makes cow's milk nearly six times as deadly to our 

 infant population as is mother's milk. In our cities, where sani- 

 tary conditions are especially bad, the death rate for infants fed 

 on cow's milk often exceeds ten times the death rate of those 

 fed on mother's milk. An especially instructive point is the fall 

 in the death rate of children fed on cow's milk when a supply 

 of pasteurized milk is provided. Pasteurization improves the 

 quaility of a milk only on the bacterial side. It does not aid in 

 its digestibility, but rather the reverse. Yet pasteurization low- 

 ers the death rate of the children using such milk. This is as 

 good proof as we need that it is the bacterial contamination of 

 the milk that causes the trouble. 



