l6o AGRICULTURE OF MAINE. 



Health is man's normal condition, and nature does much to keep 

 him in health. She gives him power of resistance to help with- 

 stand the attacks of disease germs and other bacteria. But 

 these resistant powers are very uncertain and unreliable. They 

 differ with different people and with different periods of life. 

 They are not the same at all times in the same individual. As 

 a rule they tend to decrease as we live an unnatural or artificial 

 life. All the mysteries of life and death it is not given us to 

 know, but we do know that one person may violate almost 

 every physical law and live to a good old age — while another 

 under apparently favorable conditions succumbs to typhoid or 

 tuberculosis. Not every unvaccinated person exposed to small 

 pox contracts the disease. Many survive an epidemic of 

 cholera. Not everybody who drinks unclean milk goes to an 

 untimely grave. But it is wise to avoid as many chances as 

 possible. Because every cry of mad dog is not followed by a 

 case of hydrophobia shall we lessen our efforts to eradicate 

 rabies? If only one baby in a hundred contracts tuberculosis 

 through the milk supply if that baby was yours or mine would 

 we not favor the compulsory use of tuberculin? Shall we 

 allow sanitary science to keep company with the lost arts because 

 a majority of people are tough enough — have sufficient resistant 

 power to live amid bad surroundings? Shall we feed the 

 babies of our cities with poisonous milk because it does not act 

 with the quickness and impartiality of styrchnine, and injures 

 comparatively few? 



A complete discussion of the milk question would consider 

 the dangers which milk receives in transit and in the consumer's 

 home. Some work undertaken by the Boston authorities 

 showed that of a lot of samples tested — not the same milk — 

 98.5% were within the limit of 500,000 bacteria per cubic centi- 

 meter at the place of production, 87.6% were all right on arrival 

 at the city, only 54.4% would pass muster on the peddlers' wagon, 

 and only 28.5 per cent were satisfactory in the grocery stores. A 

 worse showing could be made of the milk in many family refrig- 

 erators. But this is not the place and the time is insufficient to 

 discuss those phases of the question. 



I will pass from the "Why" of my subject to the "How." 

 That may be in a degree inferred from what I have said. If 

 clean milk is desirable because dirty milk is unwholesome, then 



