DAIRY, SEED IMPROVEMENT, STOCK BREEDERS MEETINGS. I99 

 2. HOW DIRTY MII,K AFFECTS THF PUBI^IC HEALTH, 



Broadly speaking, dirty milk affects the public health princi- 

 pally by producing very serious and fatal diarrhea and dysen- 

 tery in young children. In many instances it is doubtless true 

 that a specific germ of dysentery can be detected, but I believe 

 firmly that we do not need necessarily to find specific dysentery 

 germs in milk to have milk produce most serious cases of dysen- 

 tery in young children. I believe that dirty milk — just plain 

 dirty milk — will produce serious and fatal cases of dysentery 

 and diarrhea in young infants. It is true that whenever milk 

 deserves to be clafssed as "dirty milk," the bacterial count will 

 always be high. It seems to me reasonable to assume that a 

 large quantity of these germs, which are not ordinarily consid- 

 ered as disease germs, and more particularly the products of 

 their growth of the so-called toxins existing in the milk, are 

 enough in themselves to produce these serious indigestions, 

 diarrheas and slow starvation from lack of assimilation of milk 

 by infants. One of the best authorities in the United States 

 on infantile diseases makes the following emphatic statement 

 on this point: 



"I believe that the greatest injury is done by just dirty milk, 

 not necessarily infected milk in the warm season when bacterial 

 growth is the most favorable. Dirty milk may not be poison- 

 ous to infants but it is very apt to be so." 



One argument that we often hear advanced against this be- 

 lief that dirty milk itself will produce serious disorders is that 

 farmers' children on the farm drink this same identical milk 

 and that they thrive upon it. This is true, but the fallacy in 

 this line of argument lies just here: Milk when first drawn, 

 even if done under very careless sanitary surroundings, con- 

 tains relatively few germs of any character. It is the long 

 period of time that must of necessity elapse between the time 

 when the milk is milked and when it reaches the ultimate con- 

 sumer — that is, the city infant — that allows bacterial growth to 

 make such rapid headway and changes the milk from a food 

 that is wholesome for farmers' children, and which they drink 

 and thrive upon, to an unwholesome food which the city infant 

 drinks and dies from as a result. 



